witzend was the first of the
independent or “indy” magazines.Premiering in 1966, it published 13 issues over almost two decades, most
of them between 1966-1971 and provided a welcome link between mainstream comics
and the then-new underground movement.Although, at times, particularly in the early issues, it seemed to
suffer from the lack of a strong editorial hand at the helm, that was actually
at Wood’s insistence.He made it quite
clear in his original editorial in #1 that this magazine was intended as a
showcase for writers & artists, with little or no editorial direction or
interference.witzend certainly
showcased many important artists of the period and pointed out a direction for
every self-publishing writer/artist to this day.witzend publisher & editor Bill Pearson
has supplied some comments in the notes.His contributions are in quotes.

Notes: Thanks to Emanuel Maris, we
now have credits for this issue!witzend
originated from an idea on Dan Adkin’s part to publish a magazine called
Outlet, then turned into Wally Wood’s Etcetera.A logo was prepared using that title but when Wood discovered another magazine
with a similar title, the magazine’s title was changed witzend, after it was
solicited but before actual publishing.There
were two printings of witzend and, after selling out rather quickly, a bootleg
copy was produced by unknown characters around 1969-1970.The counterfeit copy has slightly different
paper for the cover—a slight pebble-grain.Many dealers nowadays are unaware of the existence of the counterfeit.The original appears to have the same type of
paper as #2.‘Savage World’ was drawn in
1954 and intended for Buster Crabbe Comics.The comic was cancelled before the story was used and Williamson
accepted the art back instead of payment.Wood wrote a totally new script for the story for this appearance as the
original was lost.Best story here was
Archie Goodwin’s chilling ‘Sinner’, which was reprinted in Marvel’s B&W
magazine Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction Special #1 in 1976.Best art is by Wood on ‘Animan’.

2. cover: Wally Wood/back cover: Ralph
Reese (1967)

1) What Is It… [Wally
Wood/Tajana Wood] 1p[text article,
frontis]

2) Orion [Gray Morrow] 6p

3) Hey Look! [Harvey Kurtzman]
1preprinted from ?

4) Hey Look! [Harvey Kurtzman]
1preprinted from ?

5) If You Can’t Join ‘em…Beat
‘em! [Warren Sattler] 4p

6) A Reed Crandall ERB Portfolio
[Reed Crandall] 5p[pin-ups]

7) Poetry [Wally Wood, Ralph
Reese & Bill Pearson/Frank Frazetta] 2p

8) Cartoon [Will Elder] 1p

9) A Flash Of Insight, A Cloud
Of Dust And A Hearty Hi-Yo Silver [Art Spiegelman] 3p

Notes: $1.00 for 36 pages.Gray Morrow’s ‘Orion’ serial would not be
concluded until its printing in Heavy Metal in 1979.Although Wood wanted all the material in
witzend to be original or, at least, appear there for the first time, he broke
his own rule to allow Kurtzman’s ‘Hey Look!’ pages to be reprinted.Ditko’s cute one pager is a reminder that the
guy had a sense of humor, something that is sometimes lost when regarding his
work.Spiegelman’s work was a wordless
strip.Martin’s was probably a rejected
strip for Mad.Crandall’s Edgar Rice Burroughs’ portfolio,
which would stretch out over the next four issues, had some excellent artwork.

Notes: Williamson’s back cover
featured Flash Gordon, whose comic book he was illustrating during this
period.That same back cover also
promised that witzend #3 would be an Al Williamson SF spectacular, which didn’t
actually happen.This was the debut of
Ditko’s famous {or infamous—depends on your outlook} Mr. A.While not as strident as later strips, it
still clearly depicts Mr. A’s black & white outlook on the world.Whatever you though about the actual story
you couldn’t deny that it was beautiful artwork.Frazetta’s story was a comic strip tryout
from 1950 refashioned into traditional comic pages by Bill Pearson.Roger Brand’s work was very good and shows a
strong Krigstein influence.This is an
excellent issue.

Notes: Frazetta’s back cover was
very good, showing an American Indian being carried off by a pterodacytal.It’s possible it was done for one of the
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books. Wood’s ‘Pipsqueak Papers’ was a cute and oddly
innocent erotic fable.Both Ditko &
Brand delivered strong stories & art and Pearson’s ‘The Sneeze’ was quite
amusing.Wood’s illustrated prose story,
‘The World Of The Wizard King’ would be reworked into traditional comic form
and published as a graphic novel in the late 1970s.Another good issue.

Notes: Publisher & Editor: Bill
Pearson.Wood sold witzend to Pearson
for the sum of $1.00 along with the promises to publish through at least #8
{the issue that Wood had sold subscriptions up to} and to run any story already
accepted by Wood as is.Steranko’s Talon
preview was for a Conanesque barbarian swordsman.The artwork looked great so it was too bad
the promised story never appeared.Steranko later used the spelling of the word Prevue as the new title of
his renamed Mediascene magazine {which was itself renamed from the original
Comicscene title}. Thanks to the mystery artist JAF’s daughter Michelle, we’re
happy to announce the identity of JAF.His real name is James Frankfort who was a successful cartoonist/commercial
artist for a number of years in Greenwich Village and taught at NewPaltzUniversity.He died in 2005, an independent artist his
entire life.

Notes: According to Bill Pearson,
the intricate, detailed cover took a huge amount of time & labor to achieve
in 1969’s pre-computer production days.‘The Spawn Of Venus’ was a previously unpublished EC story, originally
intended for an EC 3-D Classic issue.Check
out Bill Pearson’s comments for #7 for further information on Ditko’s ‘The Avenging
World’.Benson’s interview with Eisner
is not only well done but provides the interesting information that, as of
Sept. 10, 1968, Eisner had no knowledge whatsoever of the existence of his
future publisher, Warren Publishing.BP:
“Mike Hinge was another overlooked genius.He was a designer, not a cartoonist, but when he came to me with the
idea for this cover, I was immediately intrigued.Eddie Glasser, my business partner in
Wonderful Publishing Company and the head of the photography dept. at Admaster
Prints where I worked as production manager of the art dept., produced dozens
of intricate cels with overlapping machinery patterns and Mike and I both put
in dozens of hours creating the final wraparound design and logo.The printer had a challenging job too!Except for the printer, not a one of us made
a dime for all the work.In fact, we
lost money that could have been made for freelance work during those hours but
it was worth it.So many people have
told me over the years that something they saw in witzend inspired them, and
there’s no greater reward than that!”

7. cover: Vaughn Bode/back cover: Kenneth
Smith (1970)

1) Editorial [Bill Pearson/Ralph
Reese] 1p[text article, frontis]

2) Cobalt 60 [Vaughn Bode] 10p

3) Letters’ Page [Dan Adkins] 2p

4) Mr. A: The Avenging World,
part 2 [Steve Ditko] 8p

5) The Strange Adventure Of Ike
And His Spoon [Roger Brand] 6p

6) Pin-Up [Ed Paschke] 1p

7) Limpstrel [Berni Wrightson]
1p

8) untitled [Bill Pearson] 1p

9) Mr. E [Bill Pearson/Tim
Brent] 2p

10) Limpstrel [Berni Wrightson]
1p

11) The Journey [Betty
Morrow/Gray Morrow] 8p[Final page is
printed on the inside back

cover]

Notes: $1.50 for 48 pages.Bode’s cover was extremely gruesome.His interior story, ‘Cobalt 60’ was just as
gruesome but it was also his best straight SF tale.Beautifully drawn and powerfully written,
this featured the best story & art in this issue and is a genuine classic
of the comics genre.Ditko’s ‘The
Avenging World’ was not actually a story but a political/philosophical essay
told in comic form.The artwork was some
of his most innovative.Paschke’s pin-up
depicted Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Little Dot, Dennis the Menace, Casper the
Friendly Ghost, Little Lulu and Little Orphan Annie as dope fiends in an opium
den!Bill Pearson’s ‘Mr. E’ strip was a
rather savage satire on Steve Ditko’s Mr. A character.It was also printed sideways and was actually
four pages in length.The third &
last ‘Limpstrel’ story appeared in another fanzine in 1972.BP: “Ditko had been one of the most
supportive contributors to witzend.Even
after I became publisher, he came to my apartment a couple of times and spent
hours with me stuffing envelopes and helping with the other drudge duties
involved in maintaining the subscription files.This was AFTER his Marvel years with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.But I HATED publishing that ‘Avenging World’
diatribe of his, and would have preferred to reject it and hope he couldn’t
find another publisher either.I felt
about him just as I did about Wood.Throughout our long association I tried, sometimes successfully,
sometimes not, to keep him from publishing personal revelations that betrayed
flaws in his character or deficits in his intellect.BOTH of these men were master cartoonists,
genius talents, but they DID need editors.I really debated with myself about running ‘Mr. E’, but just had to
offset Ditko’s strong positions.”As
mentioned in the notes for #5, Pearson’s agreement with Wood prevented him from
rejecting any Ditko stories that Wood had accepted and that agreement apparently
covered ‘Avenging World’.The Morrows’
strip was blessed with a good story and downright stunning erotic art.One of witzend’s best issues.

9) The Hunting Of The Snark
[John Richardson] 8pfrom the poem by
Lewis Carroll

Notes: The title logo appeared in
the mouth of the devil depicted on the back cover.Reese’s cover was a panel blowup from the
interior story.Frazetta’s artwork for
‘The City In The Sea’ was originally done in 1960 {or earlier} for an
unpublished one page adventure Sunday comic strip.It was reformatted {similar to what was done
for Last Chance!} by Bill Pearson and combined with the Poe poem.According to Bill Pearson, the actual artwork
was very large, the same size that Hal Foster used to illustrate the Prince
Valiant Sunday pages.One panel from the
original page was not used.It easily
has the best art & poetry for this issue.Perhaps someday the original tryout page will be printed.Cuti’s ‘Foxtale’ was somewhat of a preview or
prototype for his 1980-1982 series for Warren,
entitled ‘The Fox’. ‘Barf The Insurance
Salesman’ was an amusing tale in the National Lampoon vein of humor.After this issue, witzend began to fizz out,
with years occurring between issues.There were still good issues and stories to come, but I don’t think any
of them had the impact of these first 8 issues.

Notes: This was a W. C. Fields
special.Publisher: Phil Seuling.Editor: Bill Pearson.$1.50 for 38 pages.No comics in this issue whatsoever.BP: ‘The printer screwed up the cover by
Jeff Jones, so I hastily had some full color prints of the painting made, and
included them with the magazine.This
issue got almost no distribution {I hadn’t solicited subscriptions beyond #8}
and Phil Seuling and I dissolved our business partnership soon after
publication.He financed #8 &
#9.I had HUNDREDS of copies, but it
became known as the ‘missing’ issue of witzend.They were all destroyed in my house fire, so now it really IS a rare
publication.”

10. cover: Wally Wood (1976)[wraparound cover]

1) Kym: Lost In A Dream! [Bill Pearson/Dick
Giordano] 8p

2) 39/74 [Guyla & Alex Toth/Alex Toth] 10p

3) On March 17, 1969… [Howard Chaykin] 3p

4) Pin-Up [Terry Austin] 1p

5) Sally Forth [Wally Wood] 6p

6) Pin-Up [P. Craig Russell] 1p

7) The Avenging Dodo [Bill Pearson/Mike Zeck] 8p

8) Pin-Up [Walt Simonson] 1p

9) My Furry World And Welcome To It! [Nicola
Cuti/Joe Staton] 10p

Notes: Publishers & editors:
Bob Layton & Bill Pearson.$3.00 for
48 pages.Printed in conjunction with
CPL/Gang Publications.‘Kym’ was a three
part dream sequence that would take 6 years to conclude.Based on the November completion date noted
in Chaykin’s artwork, this book had to come out in Dec. 1976.‘39/74’ is copyrighted by Marvel Publications
so it must, at one time, been intended for a Marvel magazine.It’s well drawn, but the story itself is not
particularly interesting.Wood’s ‘Sally
Forth’ story had the appearance of being a reformatted comic strip.Russell’s pin-up appeared to be a slightly
redrawn Dr. Strange cover or splash page.Best story & art goes to Chaykin’s rather chilling solo effort but
both ‘The Avenging Dodo’ and ‘My Furry World And Welcome To It!’ were amusing
and well drawn.BP: “By this time, I
wasn’t making much money, but coerced Bob Layton into financing what I think is
a pretty nice issue.”

11. cover, frontis & back cover: Bill
Pearson (1978)

1) Introduction [Bill Pearson]
1p[pin-up and brief intro]

2) Kym Pin-Up [Bill Pearson] 1p

3) Spurt Starling [Bill Pearson]
1p

4) A Portfolio: The Wicked World
Of The Wizard King[Wally Wood] 12p

5) Early Poop [Bill Pearson]
1p[credited to Q. P. Hamstrung]

6) The Care And Feeding Of Geks
[Nicola Cuti/Mike Zeck] 8p

7) Spurt Starling II [Bill
Pearson] 1p

8) The Enormous Slug Suckers
From The Planet Mars!! [Bill Pearson] 8p

9) The Slugsucker Diagram [Bill
Pearson] 1p[diagram]

10) Kym: Encounter [Bill
Pearson/Ruben Yandoc] 8p

11) Early Poop II [Bill Pearson]
1p[credited to Q. P. Hamstrung]

12) Spurt Starling III [Bill
Pearson] 1p

13) Kym Pin-Up [Dan Adkins] 1p

14) Pin-Ups [Bill Pearson]
3p[last pin-up on inside back cover]

Notes: $4.00 for 48 pages.The Wally Wood material consisted of unused
panels or sketches intended for his Wizard King graphic novel, which itself was
a reworking of the earlier text story that had appeared in witzend.The portfolio pages included here were
considered too erotic for the graphic novel itself.‘Early Poop’ was an X-rated spoof of ‘Alley
Oop’.‘Spurt Starling’ was a spoof of ‘Flash
Gordon’.Best story here was the
delightful ‘The Care And Feeding Of Geks’ by Cuti & Zeck although Pearson’s
‘Early Poop’ and ‘Spurt Starling’ are funny.BP: ‘I thought I was producing a spoof of underground comix, but lost
all editorial judgement and used too much of my own art…and the reaction was
silent embarrassment.I conned Bill
Black into co-financing this issue {sight unseen} and I suspect he junked his
half of the print run.”This, along with
#9, are the hardest issues to find.

Notes: $3.50 for 48 pages.Bush’s cover was a rendering of Humphrey
Bogart based on a photo still of his character from The Treasure Of The Sierra
Madre.This was the 3rd and
last installment of the dreams of ‘Kym’‘Lunar Tunes’ must have been one of Wally Wood’s final stories.Jerry Bingham’s pin-ups were quite well drawn
but the barbarian theme seemed a little out of place in this bunch of
stories.Some interesting alternative
work here.BP: “This is a nice issue, I
thought.I conned a gangster {well, he
was a major league drug dealer} into financing this issue, and he too kept half
{2500 copies} of the print run.You
better believe I paid him back as soon as I sold my 2500 copies!He surely eventually junked his 2500 copies.”

Notes: Final issue.$3.00 for 36 pages.An all ‘good girl’ pin-up issue.No comic stories at all.Some beautiful pin-ups and sketches here with
great artwork from everybody involved.I
particularly liked the Wally Wood witzend cover mockup; Bill Pearson’s efforts,
Bob McLeod’s back cover , the Krenkel sketchbook art and Heinrich Kley’s {a
Jewish artist who disappeared during Hitler’s regime} artwork but all of the
artwork is of high quality.If you like
pin-up art {especially of mostly naked babes} this is a pretty good book.Rowich’s art was a drawing of Sheena of the
Jungle from the cover of Jumbo Comics #46.BP: “I think I somehow financed this issue myself, and it was the most
popular number of the entire series.Bud
Plant kept reordering for years.Not
counting the hundreds of man-hours I put into it, this issue actually broke
even!Also destroyed in [my] house fire
were approximately 140 pages of what I hoped would be the ultimate issue of
witzend, many years in the making, an eclectic mix of some really fabulous
material.But it wasn’t to be.”

Notes: Although not officially an
issue of witzend, this reprint volume {not to be confused with the 1970s Wood
newsletter of the same name} of Wood’s work for witzend came out in 1980 and was,
in effect, an issue of witzend.The back
cover was actually the splash page from the second part of Animan.

Notes: All information for this
issue was provided by Jeffrey Clem.It’s
much appreciated, Jeff!Publisher &
editor: Mark Feldman?$? For 72
pages.Frazetta’s cover was repeated on
the back cover sans copy.Sal Buscema’s
sketch in the Jeff Jones interview featured the Avengers battling Ultron and
had nothing to do with Jeff Jones at all.Dave Cockrum’s pin-up also featured many Marvel characters in a
“bigfoot” art style.Severin’s interview
art featured his work on Cracked’s mascot logo.Sutton’s interview featured no art at all.The next issue ad included artwork for
Michael Kaluta’s story ‘Hey, Buddy, Can You Lend Me…?’, which ended up in the
fanzine Scream Door {see below}.

4)
Nest Egg, part 3 [Alan Simons/Dan Adkins & Steve Hickman] 3p

5) Frankenstein Pin-Up [Tom
Sutton] 1p

Notes: Final issue.Wrightson’s ‘Out On A Limb!’ was originally
intended as the cover story for the never published Web Of Horror #4.Sutton’s Frankenstein pin-up was done just
before he began writing & illustrating the character for Skywald.Brunner’s back cover was a preview page for a
proposed series that was to have been called ‘Red Man’s Burden’.Wrightson’s cover showed the same frontier
coot that would headline the story ‘King Of The Mountain, Man’ from his early
collection Badtime Stories while his frontispiece was a try-out page dealing
with Frankenstein.Another page from the
same try-out appeared as the cover to Scream Door #1.Good issue & art.

Infinity

1. cover:

Notes: At this time, information is
not available for this issue.Infinity
was somewhat of a hybrid fanzine, combining articles which featured a great deal
of artwork as well as the occasional comic story.

Notes: $1.50 for 48 pages.The Steranko illo that appeared in the
Wrightson interview depicts Marvel’s Black Panther character.Information on this issue provided by Jeffrey
Clem.There were at least two printings
of Infinity #2 with a few of the illustrations dropped and new ones added in
their place.

Notes: Publishers & editors:
Gary Berman & Adam Malin.$1.50 for 28
pages.Brunner’s cover was originally
intended for the never published This Is Legend #2.This issue was split into two separate
magazines, with an additional supplement of six sketch pages given to
subscribers.The supplement features
sketches by Al Williamson {Flash Gordon}, Jack Kirby {Captain America}, Mark Rydell, Randy Yeates, Frank
Frazetta, Joe Sinnott {The Thing}, SydShores {Captain America} & Randy Yeates-Mark
Rydell.Kaluta’s ‘As Night Falls’ dream
series had three separate parts, the other two appearing in other fanzines
during 1971-1972.

4) Life Among The Beetles, Boners,
And Hi And Lois [Mort Walker] 2p[text
article w/ cartoon

strips]

5) Mr. Wizzy… [Mort Drucker] 1p

6) Candy Camera… [Mort Drucker]
1p

7) Pin-Up [Frank Brunner] 1p

8) Reality Ad [Michael Kaluta]
1p

9) Wallace Wood page [Wally
Wood?] 1p[on inside back cover]

Notes: The second half of #3.This issue included a lengthy letters’ page
with artwork by Kenneth Smith, Al Williamson & Randy Yeates.Robert L. Kline, Gordon Love, Kenneth Smith
& Randy Yeates sent in letters.Jones’ little two-page strip was the first part of a intended serial but
it was never concluded.Wrightson’s back
cover was a depiction of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.A similar page appeared in the portfolio
section of #3, part 1.These may have
been try-out pages for the adaptation of that nursery rhyme that appeared in
Abyss #1.

Notes: $3.00 for 80 pages.Joe Schuster’s frontispiece is a 1940’s era
cheesecake pin-up (it’s rather faint but very well done).‘Fastest Gun In The West’ was signed “Mooney
1972’ but the writer/artist’s full name was not included on the titlepage and
the artist is unknown to me.Kaluta’s
story is wordless, but has word balloons.The reader was encouraged to script the story and it’s possible this
effort at reader participation was inspired by Web Of Horror’s similar artist
contest. The artwork appears to be based on the same Chinese legend (involving
a were-deer) that Nicola Cuti used for two different stories in the 1970s and
1980s—one for Charlton & one for Warren.
One of the Wrightson pin-ups is described as unused letter’s page art for Web
Of Horror, but the artwork actually does appear in WHO #2 &3.Jack Jackson, Tom Yeates & William Stout
sent in letters.The Wrightson back
cover is another wash page depicting the Headless Horseman.Wrightson did a number of these for various
fanzines in the early 1970s.This is a
very impressive package with stellar artwork from Brunner, Yeates, Kaluta and
others and striking covers from Corben & Todd.Some of this issue’s information was provided
by Jeffrey Clem (Thanks, Jeff!).

Notes: $? for 48 pages. A color
print by Berni Wrightson, depicting a macabre rock band called the Cryptics,
was inserted in this issue.Underground
artist Jack Jackson & future cover artist Clyde Caldwell sent in
letters.The Warp article covered the Chicago stage play and
included many of Neal Adams’ costume design pages, including the lead
character’s Killraven-like costume.‘Junkwaffel’ was printed sideways.

Notes: $2.00Publisher & editor: Richard L.
Jennings.The Rydell pin-up appears to
be a tryout strip (entitled Trolls) for Creepy’s Loathsome Lore.The Frazetta pin-up is a Conan sketch.Only two actual strips appear here, though
both are quite good.This is largely a
pin-up book.Mary Skrenes used the
penname of Virgil North during a period when female names (at least names that
were clearly female) were frowned upon by comic publishers.

Notes: $1.50.Publisher & editor: Robert Gerstenhaber.Gerstenhaber was 14 years old when he
published this fanzine.The Wein/Kaluta
strip is only part 1 of the story.Both
it and ‘Quasar’ were originally intended for the never published Web Of Horror
#4.Ingels’ story/art page, depicting a
knight, was done in 1955, shortly after EC folded and apparently intended for
Classics Illustrated.Best story here is
Steve Hickman’s ‘Quasar!’, although if ‘Death Is The Sailor’ had been printed
in its entirety it would have been chosen.Best art is Frank Brunner’s on ‘Endless Chain’.Check out the 2007 interview with publisher
Robert Gerstenhaber at the end of this page!

Notes: $2.00 for 36 pages.The front & back cover appear to be
reversed, causing the magazine’s logo to appear only on the back cover, but
publisher Robert Gerson assured me that this was intentional.He wanted a full bleed painted front cover
without any type.He was inspired to do
this based on Jerry Weist’s efforts with EC fanzine Squa Tront’s 3rd
& 4th issues.Kaluta’s back
cover is quite nice. The first four pages of ‘Death Is The Sailor’ were reprinted
from the first issue, with the first two pages being combined and printed
sideways on a single page.The actual
story length is 7 pages.‘Webster’s
Page’, ‘Death Is The Sailor’ & ‘Outside-In’ were all originally intended
for the never published Web Of Horror #4.Other ‘As Night Falls’ segments were published in various fanzines from
1970-1972.There were three segments in
all.‘Revenge’ marks then-Queens College
student Howard Chaykin’s comics debut.Best story is ‘Death Is The Sailor’ while both Bruce Jones & Michael
Kaluta share honors for best artwork.

Notes: $2.00 for 32 pages.Published & edited: Berni Wrightson,
Bruce Jones, Jeff Jones & Michael Kaluta.This one-shot effort has some very nice artwork (much reprinted over the
years) and may have been done in reaction to the cancellation of Web Of Horror
earlier in the year, which Wrightson & Bruce Jones were to have
edited.Kaluta’s first strip & Bruce
Jones’ contribution could easily have fit in that magazine’s framework.The best story is Kaluta’s ‘The Hunter And
The Hunted’ while Jeff Jones’ artwork on ‘Union’
takes the best art honors.

Notes: Publishers: Mark Feldman & Robert Lewis.$? for 20 pages.This was probably intended as the third issue
of I’ll Be Damned as it follows much the same format and is from the same
editor of that fanzine title.[Emanuel
Maris, who purchased the fanzines when they first came out, confirms that this
should be considered I’ll Be Damned #3).Oddly, the interior pages are slick paper while the cover is rough card
stock.Wrightson’s cover is a try-out page
for a Frankenstein story.With the
exception of the Juanillo strip, all of the comic stories published here were
originally intended for Web Of Horror #4.Although Wrightson’s original cover disappeared when Major Magazines
publisher Robert Sproul moved his offices, Wrightson retained a mock up of the
cover and that is what appears here.Sutton’s pseudonym, Seane {or Sean} Todd, was used when Creepy &
Eerie publisher James Warren forbid any of his regular writers or artists to
work for the rival B&W mag, Web Of Horror.Tom Sutton provides both the best art & story here.

Notes: Publisher & editor:
David Jablin.$2.00 for 32 pages.The next issue announcement advertises an
adaptation of a “classic” SF story by Neal Adams.To my knowledge this was never done.‘Tangent’ was an unpublished syndicated daily
strip tryout.The copy I have is
actually a second printing.According to
Emanuel Maris, the 1st printing’s back cover was far too dark to
reproduce the halftoon pencil work, so a month after it came out, Jablin
returned most of the 1st printing and had a second printing
done.He also replaced a three page
strip that appeared in the 1st printing with the Nova Christus
material by a very young Howard Chaykin.According to Chaykin himself, he didn’t ink that three pager and isn’t
sure who did.Eric Pave appears to be a
house name that was used for several different creators.

Notes: Publisher: John
Carbonaro.Editor: Sal Quartuccio.$5.00 for 74 pages.In 1971 dollars that’s close to $25-30 bucks
today!A very expensive book!A crude attempt was made to censor pubic hair
on the DeZuniga story ‘Dragon Slayer’ but whatever they did actually ends up
highlighting it!‘Sword Of Dragonus’ was
originally intended for Web Of Horror.I’ve gone on record before (see the notes for Unknown Worlds Of Science
Fiction #1) about my high regard for Adams’ ‘A View From Without…’, a story I
believe to be one of Adams’ best works.He uses virtually every type of comic art available in 1971, including
fumetti, pen & ink, wash, charcoal, shaded, and straight pencils, with each
panel being practically a comics textbook in artwork and layout for young
artists.There’s an artistic homage to
Joe Kubert & Sgt. Rock on page 5.The story, originally called ‘Greetings’, is a horrific view of the
Vietnam War, narrated by an extraterrestrial observer who is portrayed by Adams
himself in photo inserts.Adams apparently completed the story several years
earlier and perhaps intended it for Archie Goodwin’s Blazing Combat
series.Whatever your opinions may be on
the war itself, the story is a tour-de-force, on a par with Kregstein’s ‘Master
Race’.I’m amazed it’s only been
reprinted once {in Marvel’s Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction #1 in 1975}.This story justifies the entire existence of
this book.Other good work appears from
Ken Barr, Marv Wolfman, Rich Buckler, Frank Brunner, Jeff Jones, Tom Sutton,
Michael Kaluta, Tony DeZuniga and Billy Graham.

Notes: Publishers: Robert Lewis
& Joel Pollack.Odd & (as far as
I know) unique attempt at a fine arts/comic artists combo coloring book.The well-known fine art illustrators’ work is
beautiful.Most of the comic artists
were just starting out and the artwork ranges from quite good to basic fanzine
artwork.There’s lots of nudity so I’m
not sure who the intended audience was. The indica notes that Wrightson’s
artwork is from 1968 and it looks it.Windsor-Smith’s rising sun/samuari art appears to be from 1969-1970 and
is reproduced from pencils.Cockrum, Jones
& Chaykin provide the best work here.Jones’ cover is reprinted sans copy on the back cover.

Notes: Publisher: Bruce Hershenson
{for 1B only}.Publishers {for 1A only}
& editors: Doug Murray & Richard Garrison.$? for 72 pages each.Flash Gordon tribute titles.Each issue was perfect bound, magazine-sized
trade paperbacks.Al Williamson provided
spot illos throughout both volumes.With
the exception of Neal Adams’ wordless tale, all artists were apparently
restricted to four pages apiece.Adams’ story also featured John Carter of Mars and
Tarzan. There really are no great
stories there but the art is impressive and most of the stories are
entertaining.I particularly liked the
Michael Kaluta, Mike Royer & Bruce Jones contributions.The Ivie article is also good reading.

Venture

1. cover: Frank Cirocco/titlepage & back cover:
Brent Anderson (1972)

1) Introduction
[Frank Cirocco & Brent Anderson] 1p[text article]

2)
Advent Ad [Gary Winnick/George Chelemedos] 1p

3)
Pin-Up [Frank Cirocco] 1p

4)
The Incident [Brent Anderson] 6p

5)
Grimley’s Tales [Frank Cirocco/Brent Anderson] 1p

6)
‘Tis Just As Well [Scott Burdman/Brent Anderson] 1p[poem]

7)
Garthan’s Quest [Frank Cirocco] 9p

8)
Grimley’s Tales [Brent Anderson] 1p

9)
Grimley’s Tales [Frank Cirocco/Brent Anderson] 1p

10)
A Tall Tale… [Frank Cirocco] 2p

11)
Elfrid [Gary Winnick] 3p

12)
Pin-Ups [Gary Winnick] 2p

13)
Grimley’s Tale [Brent Anderson] 1p

14)
Pin-Up [Frank Cirocco] 1p

Notes: $.75 for 32 pages in a
magazine-size format.Publishers &
editors: Frank Cirocco & Brent Anderson.This first issue is very much a fan production with neither Cirocco’s
nor Anderson’s
artwork anywhere close to a pro level.They show definite promise though.Best stories are the one-page Grimley’s Tales gag strips which are
nearly professional and quite amusing.

Notes: Publisher: Horizon Zero
Graphiques.Editors: Frank Cirocco, Gary
Winnick & Frank Morant.$1.00 for 32
magazine-sized pages.My copy came with
a pen sketch of a fish by Steve Skeates, who doesn’t appear anywhere in the
actual issue.Neal Adams’ frontispiece
is a drawing of the Vision.Although Adams’ superheroes sketches are usually widely
reprinted.I’ve never seen any of the
artwork included here printed elsewhere.They are clearly convention sketches, though.This is a nice little fanzine, although it
received some heavy criticism at the time it was being published, particularly
from RBCC.Cirocco’s art is easily the
best in this although both Anderson & Winnick show a great deal of
promise.Anderson’s ‘Grimmley’s Tales’ are rather
amusing, too.

Notes: The three Batman pages are
gag strips and rather amusing ones.Winnick’s back cover features Tarzan.Kenneth Smith& Don Newton
sent in letters.Not quite as good as
the previous issue but not bad at all.The issue I have has a one-page insert ad for original art with a little
note on the back from Frank Cirocco asking ‘R.W.’ to write a letter for the
letters’ page.

Notes: Editors: Gary Winnick &
Frank Cirocco.$1.25 for 32 pages.Format change to a regular comic size with
color covers.Clearly this is an attempt
to upgrade this fanzine into a magazine similar to Star*Reach or Quack.The stories are good.The artwork is good.Too bad the magazine didn’t keep going.

Notes: Publisher & editor:
Michael Gilbert.$.50 for 32 pages.‘In The Interests Of Science’ was originally
published in a college newspaper.Gilbert became publisher of this fanzine by accident.His college newspaper at SUNY New Paltz, in
upstate New York,
was supposed to print this comic.It was
a project that had been in planning for years.In 1973 they actually shot the film and had enough money to print
it.Gilbert {obviously} was a major
contributor to it.However, at the end
of the year, the school put on a big party and the paper used all the printing
money for fireworks!The book literally
went up in smoke!Although they promised
to try again the following year, Gilbert would graduate before the end of the
year, so he took the negatives.Another
cartoonist in the book, Chris O’Leary, promised to split the publication costs
with Gilbert but pulled his art and himself out at the last minute.O’Leary would go on to publish his own
fanzine while Gilbert took $500 of his school loan cash and printed 4,000
copies of New Paltz Comics---then sold them door to door on campus for 50 cents
a copy.Later, other underground
publishers would distribute copies.

Notes: $.75 for 48 pages.This is a flip book, with two front
covers.One side was ground level comics
and the other X-rated underground comix.This issue was subtitled Amazing Adult Fantasies on both covers.Brian Buniak’s ‘The Sprite’ is a Spirit/Mr. A
spoof.‘New Paltz Comics’ parodies the ‘Peanuts’
and ‘Blondie’ comic strips.Best art was
on ‘Rubber Soul’ while that story and ‘The Sprite’ share best story kudos.Other interesting work appeared from Bruce
Metcalf, Linda Kent and Ned Young.

Notes: $1.25 for 56 pages.‘Asteroid’ was reprinted from #1 because the
last line of the story had been left off by mistake.“J’nnn J’nnzz” was a retelling of DC’s J’onn
J’onzz, Martian Manhunter origin.Apparently DC’s legal eagles weren’t looking too closely.Leialoha’s pin-up features Pan reading
Marvel’s ‘Warlock’, a comic that Leialoha had been the inker on.Gilbert only provided layouts on
‘Ooops!’Bonivert’s three stories were
some of the earliest printed from this unique cartoonist.They’re all quite dazzling and are the highpoints
of the issue.However, the entire issue
has strong art and stories.There are no
weak spots here.Just great
entertainment in a magazine that is well worth looking for by a serious
collector.The inside back cover
reprints the back cover in B&W.

4. cover: Michael Gilbert (1984)[wraparound cover]

1) Fairies [Michael Gilbert]
1p[frontis]

2) All In A Day’s Work [Raoul
Vezina] 6p

3) Explorer [Mark Shaw] 9p

4) Numen Of The Night Sun
[Barbara MacLeod] 10p

5) Editorial [Michael Gilbert/Larry
Rippee] 1p[text article]

6) Numen Of The Night Sun, part
2 [Barbara MacLeod] 10p[story never
concluded]

7) Mr. Quidd & Me [Roger
Stewart] 5p

8) Consumo’s Last Meal [Scott
Deschaine] 8p

9) Exodus On Babble 3 [Brian
Buniak] 6p

Notes: Final issue.Now magazine-sized.$2.50 for 56 pages.Vezina’s story is the best effort here but
the rest of the material is rather weak.‘Fairies’ was written & penciled in 1971 and intended as an
installment of ‘Creepy’s Loathsome Lore’ for Warren.

High Adventure

1. cover: Robert L. Kline (1973)[wraparound cover]

1) Annikki Pin-Up [Mike Royer]
1p[frontis]

2) Nimbus [Mark Evanier/Robert
L. Kline] 5p

3) Annikki [Mike Royer] 8p

4) Lord Sabre [Mark
Evanier/Steve Leialoha & John Pound] 11p

5) The Stalker [Mark
Evanier/Robert L. Kline] 8p

6) 78 rmp Records Ad [Robert
Crumb] 1p[on inside back cover]

Notes: Publisher & editor:
Denis Kitchen for Kitchen Sink Press.$.50 for 32 pages.Worth buying
just for Mike Royer’s superb artwork on Annikki {the story ain’t bad
either}.Also fun early work by
Leialoha, Pound, Evanier & Kline.A
rare ground level comic from a company that, at the time, published mostly
underground comix.

Orb

1. cover:(? 1974)

Notes: Publisher: Punk Publications.Editors: James Waley & Matt Rust.$1.00 for 72 pages. A fanzine out of Canada.No information is available for this issue at
this time.

Notes: T. Casey Brennan was already
a pro and had worked for Warren, Skywald & Red Circle.His ‘The Northern Light’ was a superhero
series.Bruce Bezaire was also working
for Warren at
the time, although this is the only time I’ve seen him actually draw a
story.His artwork, although not of
professional quality yet, was pretty good and his story was excellent.Almost everybody else was just starting
out.‘Reeve Perry’ was the best story,
while Ronn Sutton’s ‘Musical Roulette’, which was heavily influenced by Jeff
Jones’ one page strips in National Lampoon, featured the best art.I also like Gene Day’s ‘Plague’.The grim little Viet-Nam story, ‘Small Talk’,
has no credits.Fanzine publisher George
Henderson sends in a letter.

Notes: Mike Friedrich, publisher of
Star*Reach and cartoonist Jay Lynch send in letters.Lynch also sends in a caricature of
himself.Gene Day and John Allison share
the best art & story for ‘Half-Life’ and ‘A Shroud Of Tattered Grey’.Ken Steacy makes his professional debut.

Notes: After a publishing gap of
one year, Orb becomes a magazine-sized book.$1.00 for 56 pages.Steacy’s art
took a huge leap upward from his contribution in the previous issue.The first installment of ‘Electric Warrior’
also was the best written & drawn story this issue.‘The Horror Of Harrow House’ by Gene Day
looks a lot like an attempt at a Skywald style horror story.

Notes: You’d never know it was a
Gene Day cover just from looking at it.Totally different art style than anything I’ve seen before or
since.The Electric Warrior concluded
well, even though the entire creative team changed.‘Man O’ Dreams’ had the best art while T.
Casey Brennan’s ‘One Man’s Madness’ was the best story.The Next Issue Ad stated that Augustine Funnell
& Gene Day’s leftover Skywald story ‘The Eaters’ would appear but it
actually wasn’t published until 1985, several years after Day’s death.

Notes: Final issue.A next issue ad featured a Viking with a big
axe named Bludd, drawn by Gene Day.An
uncredited someone, whose inking style was a lot like Mike Ploog {I don’t believe
it’s Ploog, just someone with a similar style} appears to have inked pages for
both ‘Cosmic Dancer’ and ‘The Flame Of El-Hamman’.Whoever they were, they were very good.Best story was Gene Day’s ‘Trojan Horse’,
while the best art was Jim Craig’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’.

Notes: $2.50.Published & edited: Sal Quartuccio.Magazine-sized issue.This could be Perez’s professional debut.His contents page artwork & the ad for
Hot Shot #1 both advertise the She-Devils, an adventure fanzine which ended up not being published by Quartuccio.‘Mice In Veloe’ lists the artist as Baoman
Miller while the title page lists Maher as the artist.It certainly looks like Maher’s work.The Kent State Tragedy is an ad for the next
issue’s lead story.That particular
Adams’ story never appeared, although the extreme graphic violence employed by Adams in the ad reappeared in Warren Publications’ Creepy#75
with the story ‘Thrillkill’.Corben
amusingly describes writer Ed Faust’s misspelling of flies in the story ‘Flys’
as an “alternate” spelling.Best
material here would be either of the Corben stories.Corben provides the best art on his two tales
while the best story is probably ‘Flys’.

Notes: $4.00. This is a pretty good
issue.Ken Barr’s cover is quite
striking and would have made a great poster.It does appear as the cover for Barr’s recent book collection of his
cover paintings.The Theakston/Wrightson
painting (reproduced in B&W) on the editorial page looks as thought it
might have intended as a cover for a Warren or Skywald horror title.Adams’
‘Centerfold’ is a Playboy type X-rated cartoon spread over two pages (The pun
is unintentional but, based on the art, quite accurate).Hot Stuf’ would feature ads for several years
promoting Maher’s Scarecrow character but the story never appeared.Too bad, the artwork is very intriguing.Best artwork & story is probably
Morrow’s work on Orion but most of the artwork is very good, especially the Corben,
Adams, Meugniot, & Vosburg work and the stories are generally quite good as
well.Last magazine-sized issue.

Notes: $1.50.Now comic-sized.The entire issue is a single fantasy saga
extending over many years, overseen by Herb Arnold.Best art & comes from the Arnold/Corben
chapter.

4. cover: Ken Barr/back cover: Robert L.
Kline (1977)

1) Titlepage art [Ernie
Colon] 1p[frontis]

2) Space Station Dora [Jan
Strnad/Robert L. Kline] 8p

3) The Vanguard [Alex Toth]
10p

4) House On Whore Hill [Mike
Vosburg] 4p

5) Pin-Up [Herb Arnold] 1p

6) Scarecrow Preview [Bil
Maher] 6p

7) Orion, part 3 [Gray
Morrow] 6p

8) Mercy [Bob Keenan/Ernie Colon] 4p

9) Kenshi Blade! [Bill
Stillwell] 8p

Notes: ‘The Vanguard’ was originally
done for Atlas in 1975 and intended to be the new direction for Howard
Chaykin’s The Scorpion.Chaykin wasn’t
informed of this and was so angry when he accidentally saw the art that he quit
the strip.Morrow’s Orion was continued
& concluded in Heavy Metal in 1979.Best story is Jan Strnad’s ‘Space Station Dora’ while the best artwork
is Toth’s ‘The Vanguard’.Good work also
appeared from Mike Vosburg, Bil Maher, Gray Morrow, Bill Stillwell & Ernie
Colon.

Notes: $2.00.Both ‘Manimal’ and ‘The Winter Of ‘94’ were
new series and both led off with strong starts.Best art were the two efforts by the team of Larson & Boxell, while
Strnad scored again with ‘The Winter Of ‘94’.

7. cover: Michael Kaluta/back cover: Rich
Larson & Tim Boxell (1978)

1)
Titlepage art [Bil Maher] 1p[frontis]

2)
Manimal, part 2 [Ernie Colon] 8p

3)
Hornamania, part 2 [Bil Maher] 10p

4)
All The King’s Man [Howard Hill/Sonny Trinidad] 8p

5)
The Winter Of ’94: People [Jan Strnad/Rich Larson & Tim Boxell] 8p

6)
Steel Souls [Dan Recchia] 1p

7)
Editorial [Sal Quartuccio/Bil & Nish Maher] 2p[text article]

8)
To Tell The Truth [Bil Maher] 8p

9)
Pin-Up [Terry Austin] 1p[on inside
back cover]

Notes: Kaluta’s cover was reused (and reproduced much
more clearly) as the cover to Epic Illustrated #4 (Winter 1980).It appears to be a try at a Conan cover.The artwork on Quartuccio’s editorial is from
a never published story entitled ‘Barbi Meets The Dirty Dworns’.Best story is again Strnad’s installment of
‘The Winter Of ‘94’ with best art being Ernie Colan’s work on ‘Manimal’.

8. cover: Neal Adams/back cover: Rich
Larson & Tim Boxell (1978)

1)
Titlepage art [Bil Maher] 1p[frontis]

2)
The Americanization Of Japan
[Bil & Nish Maher] 8p

3)
The Winter Of ’94: The Death Of Dreams [Jan Strnad/Rich Larson & Tim
Boxell] 8p

Notes: Final issue. The editorial
promises a next issue cover by Neal Adams & Richard Corben, as well as
stories by Ernie Colon, Mike Nasser, Bil & Nish Maher, John Bryne, Terry
Austin, Steven Grant and others as well as the long anticipated Scarecrow story
by Bil Maher but it never happened.The Manimal
strip was collected in a one-shot comic by Renegade Press in 1986.It’s also cover featured here with a great
painting by Neal Adams.Best stories
here were Strnad’s final two chapters of ‘The Winter Of ‘94’.Best artwork is Ken Barr’s work on ‘Heartfelt
Thanks’.

Notes: As seen in the notes for Hot
Stuf’ #1, this issue was probably done in 1973.By 1975 when this work finally appeared, Perez was already a
professional working at Marvel.She
Devils features story & artwork by a very
young Perez, and looks it.The artwork
is quite crude but it shows a lot of promise.The story is unimpressive.Publisher & editor: James Glenn.$1.00 for 32 pages.

Notes: Publisher & editor: Flo
Steinberg.$1.00 for 32 pages.Steinberg was well known in the comic
community as Marvel’s receptionist in the 1960s and as Warren’s Captain Company head in the
1970s.This is really an underground comix
book about New York City
done by mainstream artists and writers.It’s not bad, either.Wood’s ‘My
Word’ is an X-rated follow-up to his EC story ‘My World’.While my personal favorite was Ploog’s
largely wordless strip, I also liked ‘Peep Shows’, ‘My Word’, ‘The Tube’ and
‘Over & Under’.‘Over & Under’
features the parallel lives of a gutter street whore {no, not a prostitute or
hooker, this girl is a whore!--written
& illustrated by Hama on the right hand side of each page} and a upper
class advertising slut {written & illustrated by Neal Adams on the left
hand side of each page} and how their lives are not as far apart as one might
assume.Goodwin’s ‘Peep Show’ is a very
amusing view of the early 1970s “adult” bookstore offerings.This is a rather impressive package with some
extreme sexually graphic depictions and storylines.Well worth a look.

Dr. Wirtham’s Comix & Stories

1. cover & back cover: Clifford Neal (1975)

1) The Editor Speaks:[Clifford Neal] 1p[text article, frontis]

2) Chichen Itza Comix [Clifford Neal] 8p

3) Decoding The Codex [Clifford
Neal] 2p[text article]

4) Startling Confessions!
[Clifford Neal] 7p[pin-ups]

5) Crime Comics [Clifford Neal]
6p

6) Decoding Crime Comics
[Clifford Neal] 1p[text article]

7) Pin-Ups/Cartoons [Clifford
Neal] 9p

Notes: Publisher & editor:
Clifford Neal.$? for 32 pages.All of Neal’s stories & art were credited
to Oisif Egaux.Dr. Wirthham’s was largely
an underground comix but also published some ground level material.This is the only issue that Neal contributed
all of the artwork for.His text article
‘Decoding The Codex’ is largely incomprehensible {at least to a
non-artist}.His artwork isn’t bad.His stories are particularly good.

Notes: Final issue.$2.00 for 48 pages.Another largely horror issue with some
excellent art & stories.‘Cell Food’
by Bisette & Veitch is probably the most impressive work here but Iron’s
underground style wears well on ‘Portrait Of The Arteest…’, while there’s also
high quality work from Vincent, Gilbert, Hempel, Burbey, Sech, Smith &
Larson while Budgett & Dumm show considerable promise.No real weak spots at all.This is one fine magazine.‘Sloty Beagle…’ is printed sideways.

Notes: Publisher: Graphic Stories
Guild of UCSC.Editor: Mark Clegg with
M. C. {Charles} Boatner listed as assistant editor.$1.00 for 32 pages.Apparently this is the continuation of
All-Slug Comics {which presumably were #1-6}.This may be Ken Macklin’s professional debut.He provides the best two stories in this
issue.Steve Oliff’s work is also
noteworthy.Anderson’s art is still somewhat crude, not
yet of professional quality.Most of the
issue is taken up by the editors’ contributions and the best that can be said
is that they are ok, non-pro material.This magazine eventually evolved or served as a prototype for the later
professional magazine Dragon’s Teeth.

Notes: Publishers: Jack Venooker
& Walter Gachner.$2.00 for 32
magazine-sized pages.There’s a big gap
here between artists who were clearly almost professionals and artists who were
clearly never going to be.Noteworthy
material appeared from Doug Hansen, Steve Bissette, Rick Grimes, Joel Milke and
Rick Veitch.Best work here belongs to
Howard Cruse.The rest of the book is
pretty much awful.

Andromeda

3)
The Man Who Walked Home [John Allison/John Allison & Tony Meers] 24pfrom the story

by James Tiptree, Jr.

4)
The Escape And Pursuit Of Jeanne d’Arc [Dean Motter] 19p

5)
A Day At Ygsrd’s [Jason Ross] 2p

6)
Troll: Cerebral Swamp [Don Marshall] 1p

7)
Arik Khan Ad [Robert McIntrye] 1p[on
inside back cover]

Notes: $1.25 for 48 pages.Publisher: Bill Paul.Editor: Dean Motter(?).Somewhat similar in intent and approach to
Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach, this Canadian fanzine focused on SF adaptations
and one-off stories. Allison’s excellent adaptation of the Tiptree story may
have been originally intended for Marvel’s Unknown Worlds.Jeanne d’Arc is largely wordless and was
probably a substitute for the Motter/Steacy serial ‘The Sacred & The
Profane’, which was intended for this debut issue but appeared in Star*Reach
when this issue was delayed.McIntyre
used the young girl who modeled for the frontispiece several more times.

Notes: The Van Vogt story may have
been abridged by Motter but without the original story I can’t tell.Gene Day only provides layouts for ‘Shawn Of
The Ruins’, however it’s a good story & provides the best art of this
issue.Tom Nesbitt & Ken Steacy also
provide good work.Very nice covers from
Marshall & Rivoche.

3)
Exile Of The Aeons [B. P. Nicol/Paul Rivoche] 26pfrom the story by Arthur C. Clarke

4)
Here’s Mud In Yer Eye! [Don Marshall] 20p

Notes: The nude woman in McIntyre’s
frontispiece is a swipe from a Playboy centerfold spread {circa 1976}.That particular centerfold used to hang on
the wall in the painter’s shop I worked for part time in college.A Eurasian girl, if I remember right.Best story here (for comics, anyway) is Don
Marshall’s ‘Here’s Mud In Yer Eye!’.Best art is Paul Rivoche for ‘Exile Of The Aeons’.

Notes: Final issue. Hsu’s art is
quite nice and very unlike the Liverpool Press porn cover art style he used for
Warren &
his own Quadrant series.Don Marshall’s
work is also quite good.

The Horns Of Elfland

1. cover/titlepage & dedication:
Charles Vess (July 1979)

1) Charles Vess: A Friend Of The
Tale [Ragan Reaves] 5p[text article]

2) The Shadow Witch [Charles
Vess] 11p[text story]

3) Demon Sword [Charles Vess]
10p

4) The Fiddler And The Swan
[Charles Vess] 25p[text story]

Notes: Only ‘Demon Sword’ is done
in comic form.‘The Fiddler And The
Swan’ is very much in the style of Vess’ later The Book Of Ballads material
from the 1990s.Beautiful artwork with
fair to middlin’ stories.

Notes: Publisher: Melissa Ann Singer.
Editor: ?, although Chris Claremont is listed as an editorial consultant.$2.00 for 48 pages.This is one of the great “What if…?”
fanzines.This first and only issue was
quite impressive with a great story, promising artwork and engaging characters.It was intended to run 16 chapters or
issues.I’ve seen the artwork for parts
of the never published second issue and those pages are just as good as #1’s
work.I vividly remember the sense of
wonder and joy when I finished this first issue years ago.22 years later there’s still a nagging
sadness over what could have been.For
more on this title, there’s an interview with Connor ‘Freff’ Cochran at the end
of this page.

Notes: Publisher: Nautilus
Dreams.Editor: Howard Feltman.$4.95 for 60 pages in a trade paperback
format.Excellent issue with a great
cover, an installment of Toth’s ‘Bravo For Adventure’ and fine work by Rick
Geary, Trina Robbins, Jon Muth & Howard Chaykin.

--

A 2005 Interview with Connor Freff Cochran!

RA:
Welcome & thank you, Connor!You did
a lot of work in the late 1970s, early 1980s using the name Freff.Can you give us some background on yourself?

CFC:
Born in Miami
in 1954, middle son in a set of three: the mutant.My father was a cement salesman and both of
my brothers grew up to be cement salesmen, whereas I turned out to be an
artist/writer/muscian/composer/actor/producer/techie/CEO/entrepreneur/something-or-other.This difference is partly some freak of
genetics and partly attributable to head injuries and high fevers during
childhood.I took a few hard knocks.

I’m told I had a good time during those first three years
in Florida,
but I remember nothing about them.In
fact, my first clear memory is a moment on the plane when we moved from Florida to Kansas.That memory is all about the amazing color
contrast between the light beige of the bakelite lunch tray and the bright red
and yellow of the catsup and mustard that came with my mother’s meal, each
condiment in its own little white paper cup.So I was seriously into visuals even then.

Kansas
is where I really grew up, and still feel like I’m from.We lived in Prairie Village, which sounds
like the middle of Null meets Void but was actually a ‘50s-style suburb of
Kansas City.Winding up there was a
stroke of good luck.The place offered
amazing seasonal weather variations, beautiful trees in thick profusion, huge
yards around the houses, a landscape of rolling hills and intermittent vistas
(the really flat part of Kansas is farther west), great schools, a miles-long
creek to wander, and all kinds of inadvertent cultural stimulation.The rich folks of KC, back in the early 20th
century, when it was a cattle and railroad boomtown, traveled extensively in Europe.While
there they bought everything in sight and had it shipped back home.As a result, KC has beautifully-sculpted
marble statues everywhere, a downtown with architecture and decorative tiling
straight out of Seville or Madrid, and more fountains per capita than any other
city on the planet except for Rome.It
also had enough community support to build and maintain the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art — still an amazing place, and back then arguably one of the two
great museums between the coasts, along with the Art Institute Of Chicago.I took my first drawing and painting lessons
there when I was 5 years old.They were
more babysitting classes than anything else, but after each Saturday morning
session I got to wander through the museum’s many galleries, studying
sculptures and paintings from all over the world.That part of the experience is what really
expanded my perception.

KC also had the world’s first-ever multiplex cinema, the Ward Parkway 1
& 2, which was an easy bicycle ride from my house.I practically lived there on weekends.Other places I spent a hell of a lot of time
included the library and the B. Dalton’s Booksellers that opened up nearby
while I was in junior high school.

Next big shift — and it was huge — came in the summer of
1969, when my family moved again and landed in Orange County, California, only
about eight miles from Disneyland.That’s where I went to high school, and I never particularly liked the
place.Goodbye seasons, goodbye clean
air, goodbye great schools, goodbye trees, goodbye camping, goodbye music
classics (my high school didn’t have anything it that department except
marching band).Goodbye lots of things.The only real bonus was getting involved in
SF fandom, and that wasn’t local — that was in Los Angeles, 50 miles away.Having plenty of incentive I graduated early
and got the heck out of there when I was 17.That’s when I left home and started supporting myself.

During the 33 subsequent years I have been entirely
self-employed except for two four-month stints (the last of which ended in
1974), and have lived in Florida again (briefly), California (multiple times),
New York (multiple times), Washington, D.C., Virginia, Alabama, Colorado
(multiple times), Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Nevada.These days, home is a variable: I bounce back
and forth mainly between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New
York, with side trips as needed to keep building the
creative/business empire.

Married twice.The
first time a youthful mistake, and no regrets.We stayed together for years, gradually drifted apart, and have remained
friends (she and her second husband even do consulting work for my company from
time to time); the second marriage, to an extraordinarily brilliant and
talented classical pianist, was a flaming disaster interrupted by sporadic
flashes of possibility that kept both of us hanging on longer than we should
have.No kids from either union, which
wasn’t necessarily my preference but in retrospect is a good thing.

I am the only person I know who has been a comic book
writer and artist, a magazine writer and illustrator, a video producer, a
soundtrack composer, a science reporter from BBC Television, and a graduate of
the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.An odd life, with signs of becoming even
odder.

RA: What types of books
or authors did you read as a kid?

CFC: Before I could read I would sit on the floor for
three or four hours at a time with the Encyclopedia Britannica, turning pages
and staring at them as if I was reading.Freaked my parents right out.Once I learned to read for real there were no limits.I read literally everything.If it had words I would dive in, whether I
understood the material or not.The
local library was one of my escape places, a way to just be on my own with all
those universes that were hidden inside books.I read mainly science and history and classic fantasy like Lewis Carroll
and L. Frank Baum during elementary school, and I positively devoured the
library’s back-issue stack of Science Digest, Popular Science and Popular
Mechanics.Somewhere in there I
discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs (the first paperback I ever bought for myself
was A PRINCESS OF MARS) and that inevitably led to E. E. “Doc” Smith, Arthur C.
Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Peter S. Beagle, Isaac Asimov, Poul
Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Roger Zelazny, Samuel
R. Delany, Ursula K. LeGuin and all the rest.

Then in junior high I stumbled across an issue of FANTASY
& SCIENCE FICTION magazine on a newsstand, which opened yet another door,
leading me on to GALAXY and IF and ANALOG and anything else in digest form
which claimed to publish science fiction or fantasy; and then Ace Books started
putting out their SF Special series with those amazing Leo & Diane Dillon
covers…I was completely and totally hooked.And it was by the art as much as by the fiction.Kelly Freas, Jack Gaughan, Ed Emshwiller,
Virgil Finlay, Hannes Bok, Mel Hunter, John Schoenherr, Richard Powers, the
Dillons, these people were all amazing visual forces.I couldn’t wait for that moment when the new
magazines would show up on the rack each month and I would be able to see their
covers, and all the interior art, fresh and for the first time.

By 9th grade I had a 500-volume library of SF
and fantasy on the shelves above my bed, and I could tell you everything about
every book, almost down to the individual page counts.And I was still checking out 3-5 nonfiction
books a week from the library as well, plus reading Big Historical Novels like
THE ROBEand THE AGONY AND
THE ECSTASY.I loved those.

RA: When did you get
involved in SF fandom?

CFC: Fandom was something I read about in the SF
magazines, but didn’t participate in until after the move to Southern
California.I started
around the time I turned 15 by subscribing to Buck and Juanita Coulson’s
mimeographed YANDRO (a distinction it turns out I share with Roger Ebert).Pretty soon I was involved with dozens of
fanzines, sending out letters, artwork, articles and awesomely bad poetry {of
which thankfully little ever got published}.Then I discovered LASFS, the LA Science Fantasy Society, and began
participating in their weekly APA via the mail.In 1970 I had a chance to go to my first SF convention, a Westercon, in Santa Barbara, and I was
hooked.The fans, the art show, the
huckster room, the authors, the artists, the skinnydipping in the hotel
pool…hey, count me in.

RA: When did you first
encounter the world of comics?

CFC: Comics…comics were just there, even before I could
read and before I had any real interest in drawing.I would sit for hours and cut
brightly-colored figures out of comic books, using any pair of scissors I could
get, small or large.It was no good to
cut on the printed
lines.I had to cut one infinestimal
skootch outside them, so they were
preserved, but not framed by any extra newsprint.All kind of obsessive, really, but phenomenal
training in terms of hand-eye coordination and fine motor control.

Eventually, thank
goodness, I started reading them just to read them.And as with all other reading, I was an equal
opportunity guy.I liked them all.DC or Marvel?No, both.And everything else,
too.Once again it was the art grabbing
me as much as anything.I liked the
stories and characters, but I didn’t really think about them that much (aside
from coming up with a really great explanation for Robbie Reed’s Hero
Dial).On the other hand, I thought
obsessively about what I liked and didn’t like in the art.Some of the stronger influences: Wally Wood,
Gil Kane, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Neal Adams, Russ Manning, Joe Kubert, Jim
Aparo, Jim Steranko, Steve Ditko, Murphy Anderson, and on and on.I even loved Mike Sekowsky.And I started copying, but only a few
artists.From the strip world I aped
Charles Schultz, trying to capture his misleading simplicity of line and
shape.And from comics my got-to-copy
God was Gil Kane, for the drama, power and flow in everything he did.And let’s face it, to a kid SF geek, the
Green Lantern Corps is about as hot as it could get, though Steranko’s SHIELD
stuff wasn’t far behind in its own very different way.

RA: Where and how did you make your professional debut?

CFC: Depends on
how you define professional.The first
time I ever sold my pictures was at a community art fair in Kansas City.I was 12 or 13 and completely stunned to discover that people would buy
my drawings and watercolors.It was
mainly because they were cheap, mind you, but the day is burned into my
memory.First actual “published”
pictures for money were a set of two article illustrations for a semi-pro
fanzine published by Andy Porter.That
was in 1972.My professional launch in
comics happened in October 1973: I’d come to New York at Kelly Freas’s
suggestion, to get started on an art career, and I bounced off Marvel and DC
like a pigeon hitting an oncoming tour bus.I really wasn’t good enough yet to be a penciler, and my
rapidograph-and-crowquill inking style was years away from being accepted by
the industry.So I dropped downmarket
and found myself in Wally Green’s office at Gold Key Comics.Wally didn’t need any more so-so artists {he
had plenty of those}.But he did need
writers, so I put my hand in the air and said “I can do that!”He and Paul Kuhn accepted my first pitch, a
five-pager for their TWILIGHT ZONE comic book, paid me $50 for it, and I was
in.

Soon I was
selling them 6-10 stories a month for their various titles, such as TWILIGHT
ZONE, GRIMM’S GHOST STORIES, BORIS KARLOFF’S TALES OF MYSTERY, RIPLEY’S BELIEVE
IT OR NOT, ADAM-12, STAR TREK, DARK SHADOWS, etc…, and I kept that up steadily
for the next three or four years.Len
Wein had done the same thing for them just before me.I pretty much stepped into his shoes when he
left, but then didn’t step further.Some
of the ideas in these pieces were good, but since we were aiming by design at
readers under the age of 8, none of the executions were terribly
memorable.The only thing I’m proud of
after all these years is that John Warner and I managed to get around official
company policy and actually sneak continuity-based storytelling into DARK
SHADOWS.

The money I was
making there was more than enough income at the time, given how cheap my
lifestyle was, plus by the next spring I’d also found my way into illustrations
via Jim Baen at GALAXY and IF.Jim had
just become editor.The magazines were
incredibly poor and paid very, very slowly.So he needed people who could either turn the stuff out extremely fast
(like Jack Gaughan) or else were willing to do just about anything to break in
(like me and Wendy Pini).I’m not
complaining: along with a lot of forgettable garbage I also got to illustrate
Roger Zelazny and Joanna Russ and some other great authors, and I was there
when John Varley’s first work showed up in the slush pile, four utterly
astonishing stories appearing out of the blue.

RA: Besides Gold Key, you worked for both Atlas and Marvel.Did you work for any other companies?What work did you do for them?

CFC: I did minor
stuff at DC.A friend of mine once said
that I was “little known in many fields”.In comics the description is apt.I inked {or penciled or inked} a handful of character art pages that ran
in ads and in their STAR TREK guidebooks.

My work for Atlas
never got published.Dave Kraft had
become an editor there and was desperately seeking help to turn things
around.I got handed TARGITT,
MAN-STALKER, a book about a psychotic revenge-killing FBI agent (the Mob
murdered his family, you see) who wore body-amplifying bulletproof exo-armor
(don’t ask).Gerry Conway was the
credited writer on the first three issues, but they were so stupendously,
mind-bogglingly bad that I’m certain Larry Leiber rewrote every word of Gerry’s
scripts.There was literally nothing
workable in this material.My solution
would be standard stuff, today, but it was radical thinking for 1974: I
introduced a new supporting cast, a mysterious uber-villain/conspiracy, a
mutant Ditko/Kirby lunatic android hunchback as the immediate threat…and I
killed Targitt.Resurrected him two
pages later, to be sure, with the intent of launching him on a multi-issue
transformative quest.But BANG, YOU’RE
DEAD all the same, after four or five pages of total humiliation.I also planned on making his love interest
the Vietnamese wife of his maritally-challenged brother-in-law, another
mold-breaker for 1974 that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow today.Anyway, the book got penciled {by George
Tuska, I think}, and then Atlas went under before it could be inked.I still have the script in the files and may
yet adapt it into something else.It
would make fine television in the ALIAS/LOST mold.

Marvel…ah.My public work for them was mainly to write
articles and do interviews for their B&W magazines (PLANET OF THE APES,
DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG-FU, TOMB OF DRACULA, plus a PEOPLE knockoff called
CELEBRITY).I did vast amounts of that
stuff and in the process taught myself the basics of nonfiction article
writing.I also drew a few one-page
horror pictures for TOMB OF DRACULA and --- childhood fantasy attained — got to
ink Gene Colan for a house ad.That was
real joy, both because it was Gene and because I was inking for Marvel, which
had rejected my earlier work so forcefully.

But the Marvel
work I’m actually proud of doesn’t have my name on it.I ghosted several issues of TARZAN and the
two-issue MAN-WOLF ‘Stargod’ story that ran in MARVEL PREMIERE.These books were plotted by Dave Kraft, and
fully credited to him, but I wrote all the captions and dialog.What happened — as I understood it — is that
Dave had gotten into some kind of big argument with Jim Shooter, and Shooter
was trying to come up with a legitimate excuse for firing him.Since the fastest and easiest way to do so
was to be able to say Dave wasn’t delivering on schedule, Shooter loaded him up
with too many assignments, more than
any one writer could handle.Dave’s
elegant solution was to go to people who weren’t currently working for Marvel
and subcontract.Me, I got TARZAN and
the MAN-WOLF set.

I am still
absurdly happy whenever I hear some comic book fan call those the best MAN-WOLF
stories ever, which has happened often enough to make me think Dave was really
on to something with that concept.Marvel should consider relaunching it.

RA: You’ve also worked as an essayist and interviewer.How did you get involved in that and what
were the highlights?

CFC: The need to
pay a higher rent (I was in Washington,
D.C. by this point) coincided
with an opportunity.I’d become friends
with John Warner when we were both writing for Gold Key.After he became an associate editor at
Marvel—on the B&W magazines that they started publishing in 1975—he dragged
me along.There was no scripting work to
be had, but as a cost-cutting measure Marvel had decided to fill one-third of
each magazine with articles and photos instead of the comparatively expensive
comic pages.The pitch to readers was
that they were being offered a greater variety of material, but in truth it was
just about making the books more profitable.Now, these nonfiction articles and interviews didn’t pay enough to be
attractive to any of the established comic writers at Marvel, and required a
kind of writing quite different than anyone there knew.So the door was wide open for someone like me
who could string relatively clear sentences together over a great enough length
and hit a deadline.

It was all pure
hackwork, but I’d like to stress that word “pure.”There was an innocence to it.While I was on the job I really was
fascinated by the subject matter of each article, no matter how pointless it
really was.I mean, really: a detailed
comparative analysis of all the PLANET OF THE APES movie novelizations?Interviews with virtually every human being
who had ever crossed paths with Bruce Lee?Hah!But gradually I learned how
to do the job well.

My two favorite
pieces from that period were both interviews.

One was with
screenwriter Sterling Silliphant {ROUTE 66, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED,
CHARLY, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE}, the only human being
I’ve ever met who actually spoke in flawless English.All the rest of us wander around, and start
and stop sentences at random, and generally speak so poorly that a truly
accurate transcript would be a public embarrassment.Not Sterling:
his precision of word choice and perfection of phase were uncanny.You could literally hear his semicolons.Easiest after-interview transcription I’ve
ever had to do.

The other great
interview was with Stephen King, who really is plugged into something deep and
dark and primal in the fear zone, yet who is also so unabashedly pop culture
that one of his favorite childhood comic books was the Jack Cole PLASTIC MAN.The interview was conducted through the
course of one long evening, at a home he owned in the Maine woods.In the middle of the session I had to go out to get more cassette tapes
and film from my luggage, and after talking with Stephen for only a few hours
it was terrifying to stand there in the dark and open the trunk of my car.

What I’m proud
about in these pieces, and others, is that I learned to get past the obvious
questions that my subjects usually got.I was able to surprise them, which led them to speak in new and
revealing ways instead of repeating practiced Standard Responses.

Becoming an
essayist came much later, when I got a gig writing a regular column about
creativity for KEYBOARD magazine.That
was a whole different kind of nonfiction writing and put me through an entirely
different set of changes.In between the
two, marking a transition, I wrote more than half a million words of articles
for various computer and music magazines.

In the decade
between the MARVEL phase and the KEYBOARD phase I actually wrote close to a
million worlds of articles for various computer and music magazines.

RA: Your artwork is striking and very unlike most comic artists’
work.Who were your artistic influences?

CFC: That’s a
nice compliment — thanks — but I’m not sure I’d agree.If there really is any difference, it may
come from the classical art and sculpture I unknowingly absorbed by growing up
in Kansas City, combined with the fact that I was more influenced by the work
of my favorite magazine illustrators, people like Virgil Finley and Jack
Gaughan and Kelly Freas and John Schoenherr, than I was by the work of my
favorite comic book artists (with the possible exception of Gil Kane:I see a lot of Gil’s hand in my linework and
the shapes I tend to reach for as I draw).And we shouldn’t leave out cinema: there are lots and lots of movies in
my visual programming, with an especially strong nod to Stanley Kubrick.

There’s one other
thing I can’t really explain, just demonstrate, because it happens on the
subconscious level.While we were
working on the second issue of D’ARC TANGENT, Lucie Chin told me that the
reason she liked my comic pages was “the drawing behind the drawings.”When pressed for more detail she said that it
was obvious to her that each page had a bigger visual concept, a total image
that the panels were just part of, and she said she couldprove it by showing how the lines and shapes
in different panels connected to it by showing how the lines and shapes in
different panels connected to and/or reflected each other.I scoffed.People are programmed by evolution to be pattern-builders, I told her,
and she was just inventing a set of perceptions that weren’t really there.Pure coincidence.

Then we did the
second-issue promo ad and I was forced to eat my words.That ad consisted of six panels that were
originally drawn and inked, weeks apart from one another, on six separate
pages.We put them together in the form
of three nested pairs, each pair linking panels that originally formed the
outer edges of two facing pages, like so: 3L-2L-1L-1R-2R-3R.

And damn, there
it was: Lucie’s “drawing behind the drawing,” plain to see.Shapes and lines and curves and structures
that simply could NOT be lining up this way by accident, no way in hell.This forced me to accept that somewhere
inside my head these individual panels really were part of a single larger
picture…and even though they were done on separate boards, at separate times,
my subconscious was keeping track and wouldn’t sign off on any of them,
wouldn’t tell me a given panel was finally “finished,” until it matched up to a
set of specifications I was utterly unaware of.

RA: I thought D’ARC TANGENT had one of the most promising debuts of the
1980s indy scene.What happened to cause
it to appear only that one time?

CFC: We did
great.Great sales, great reviews, great
reader mail.One guy told us he read
D’ARC TANGENT the same night he saw the final M*A*S*H, and didn’t mind losing
the latter because something wonderfully new had begun.

But it wasn’t to
be, at least not in comic form.

The reason it
died is simple, and though I understand it, and can even forgive it, I won’t
sugarcoat it.The D’ARC TANGENT comic
book was killed by Phil Foglio’s ego, which had been challenged constantly from
the beginning of the project and just couldn’t handle any more.

The character and
story concepts had started with Phil, years earlier.But he’d never been able to pull the story
together commercially, and on the way to publication other people wound up
contributing more than he did.This is
how that evolved: we began issue #1 with the notion that he and I would play it
50-50 down the line as writers and artists, but at each stage that just didn’t
turn out to be workable.D’ARC was a
serious science fiction story, not a lighthearted “cartoony” one, and Phil’s
style was and is intrinsically cartoony (which I must add, is great for that
kind of material; I am a huge fan of Phil’s work on BUCK GODOT and GIRL
GENIUS).In our group plotting sessions
(Phil, me, Lucie Chin, Melissa Singer) only a few of his ideas were making the
cut.In our art tests we quickly
discovered that I could ink him, but he couldn’t ink me.In our page tests we quickly discovered that
we couldn’t have him draw the aliens and robots and have me draw the people and
humanoids, like we’d first thought we could, because mine would be consistent
and his kept changing—different heights, different widths, different number of
fingers, different costume details, literally from panel to panel.So we brought Lucie Chin in to help: she
would rework Phil’s pencils as needed to make them consistent enough so as not
to be jarring in this serious context.

Phil, not
surprisingly, was made uncomfortable by this.But at least we were getting pages done, albeit slowly.In the end I wound up writing 80% of the
first book, penciling 80% of it, inking 100% of it (though the surviving
zipatone work was Phil’s), and doing 90% of the selling.Truth is, Lucie did as much or more penciling
that first time around as Phil, though she never got public credit because Phil
refused to let us give it to her.Phil’s
stubborn insistence was also responsible for the fact that he got “creator”
appended to his writer/artist credit while I had “producer” appended to mine,
despite the fact that I had put three years into story development and actually
had created more of the entire planned story’s characters and plotline than he
did.Since the team almost never yielded
to him over an art or story argument, we decided not to fight about the
credits, which didn’t matter all that much to the rest of us.

Then the book
came out, and people were coming up to Phil and telling him it was the best
thing he’d ever done.

Since he hadn’t
really done very much, obviously that bugged him.But he didn’t show it.Instead he soaked up the praise on the
outside, smiling, while inside I suspect he was burning up.

During the second
issue things got worse.Phil and I had
argued — a lot — during the first issue.To try and create some insulation Melissa stepped in (she was our
publisher and editor, after all) and would go over Phil’s pencils with him
before they came to Lucie and me.If she
saw something that needed fixing, she’d point it out to Phil and ask him to try
again.Pages were going back to him five
or six times before I ever saw them, and they usually came to me not because
they were right, but because they weren’t getting any better — just different —
and Melissa knew Phil was near a breaking point.By the time they came to me they still didn’t
work and usually had two new problems as well: (1) Phil wasn’t leaving adequate
room for the humanoid characters and dialog balloons, and (2) there was now so
much heavy graphite layered on the boards that they couldn’t be inked or
lettered.I’d never seen anything like
it.

Lucie and I did
the only thing we could do, under the circumstances: we carefully erased every
incoming page until there was a clear but ghostly outline of what Phil had been
trying to draw…and then we actually drew it, after which I added my own pencils
and did the inks.

A horrible
process, but the results were really beginning to sing.The art that got finished for book #2 before
everything collapsed was much better than the art in book one.

Long story short,
this latest turn of events was especially galling to Phil.He talked to Richard Pini about taking D’ARC
TANGENT to WARP Graphics.We heard some
scuttlebutt about that and asked Phil, in a team meeting, if the rumor was
true.He told us…

1) Yes, it was.

2) He’d talked to a lawyer and he owned everything.

3) If we thought otherwise we could all go piss up a rope.(That’s a direct quote.)

Then he left the
room, whistling.

Phil hadn’t
actually talked to a lawyer, of course.It was all just bluster and ego.But that was that.The book was
dead.And it took nine years, plus me
taking him to court — an entirely separate horror story — to truly settle the
conflict.

RA: Was the series influenced in any way by Warren’s EXTERMINATOR ONE series.The first story from that series also was set
in 1500s-1600s France
and featured a robot masquerading as a human.

RA: Can you give us some examples of the good and the bad in your
collaboration?

[Here we]
successfully combined layout concepts from both of us.The camera angle in the upper panel is Phil’s
choice, but the figure work and Bond-symbol is all mine.The vertical stack of robots in the lower
left panel is Phil’s idea {and a very effective one}, while the middle and
right bottom panels are woven from so many small pieces by both of us it would
be impossible to tease them out.This
was early in our collaboration, before we fried.Back then we talked about panel layouts for
hours per page, sketching possibilities at each other as we went.

This was my first
clue that there was serious trouble in collaboration land.When Phil first brought his pencils over to
show me, all the aliens had identical bell-bottomed Smurf legs.Worse, where a vast techno-cityscape was
supposed to be, there was nothing but five seconds’ worth of meaningless
squiggles.When Ilifted an eyebrow he said (and this, too, is
an exact quote) “You do that — you’re good with that scratch-ass kind of
detail.”

Again on page 4
& 5.Colonel Teel, the bizarre
little one-eyed alien, was a throwaway character.In out plotting sessions the character was a
nobody who came in to call our somebody, the Ambassador, to the bridge.There and gone, never to return.But what Phil drew was just so damn weird and
interesting that I could NOT put normal dialog in the thing’s “mouth.”So I listened, and listened, and from
somewhere on the other side of the universe I plucked out this weird style of
translator-mangled speech which was way too cool to give to a nothing character.Just like that, Teel wasn’t a nobody at all,
but part of the main cast.In fact, he
wound up playing a major part in the planned 16-issue story arc.

RA:What were the intentions for
the remaining 15 chapters of D’ARC TANGENT?

CFC: What we
planned was to tell an epic love story that was also absolutely straight
science fiction.It was going to run 16
issues in the form of four separate 4-issue arcs, each arc the equivalent of a
single novel or feature film.And then
it was going to stop.Important
characters were going to die along the way.Others were going to suffer terrible tragedies.And still others would get through,
magically, without a dent or scratch.In
other words — and I don’t feel at all self-conscious in making this comparison
— we were shooting to do the WAR AND PEACE of science fiction comic books.

And we could have
done it, too, or at least come close.The story we cooked up over three years of development really was
awfully good.

RA: Are there any plans to move forward on it today?

CFC: Yes.The final 1994 legal settlement opened
multiple doors.Original comic book
rights went to Phil, but under severe constraints that make it unlikely he’ll
ever tackle the project.Original novel
rights went to me, and I have from time to time done some work in that direction.All secondary rights — including media rights
— stayed the property of the group, as administered by Melissa Singer.That changed in 1995 when we made a movie
deal for the property, and a joint venture was formed by me, producer David
Nicksay {ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES, most recently BE COOL}, and Pacific
Data Images, the company that went on to do ANTZ and SHREK as the DreamWorks
computer animation unit.I was sole
screenwriter, partnering on story development with a friend and business
associate of mine, David Roudebush.Like
many things in Hollywood
the project never quite gelled due to differing motivations, and in the end I
wound up reacquiring all the film rights.Now development has begun all over again through Changeling, the film
unit in my production company, with support from a producer named James
Dowaliby and ongoing story work by David Roudebush and (let’s welcome her
back!) Lucie Chin — who is an absolute genius at working out action sequences
that are also character-based.

What shot down
the late ‘90s film approach down, as much as anything, was simple poor
timing.We were ahead of the wave.Despite STARS WARS, Hollywood had no accepted model for a story
that as big as D’ARC TANGENT.I was
constantly telling my joint venture partners “No, it’s not a movie and three
sequels.It’s a single picture that
spans four films!”And they didn’t get
it.In these post-LORD OF THE RINGS
days, however, I don’t have any trouble communicating the idea at all.“You say the first movie ends on a
downer?No problem.THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING was incredibly
depressing at the end, and it still did $861 million worldwide.”

Now we’re doing
all four screenplays, and storyboarding all four films, and producing a ton of
conceptual art and GCI concept tests.When the pitch package is ready we’ll start up the studio dance and see
if anybody bites.

In an odd way,
all the downtime has been a plus.I’ve
had 22 additional years to work on the story, years without Phil’s influence or
the then-limitations of the comic book field, and the tale has simply grown
richer and deeper for all the extra effort.When DARC (as it is now titled) finally does make it to the screen, it
will be the epic I dreamed about when Phil first brought his failed comic to me
and said, “Here, fix.”

RA: Sounds like an exciting project.Of your own work, what is your favorite?

CFC: In terms of
straight prose, I’m most satisfied with some of my Creative Options essays —
especially one called “Going Too Far,” which is about having to identify a
friend’s body in the morgue — and a horror short I wrote 20 years ago called “A
Night On The Docks”.In terms of
screenplays {an utterly different kind of writing}, my favorite is always the
one I’m working on at the moment.At
this time, that happens to be an adaptation of Peter S. Beagle’s novel A FINE
AND PRIVATE PLACE.

In terms of
artwork, there’s nothing I’ve ever done that I’m really happy with.A few sketches here and there are
interesting, plus some of the D’ARC pages, a few of my illustrations for John
Varley’s TITAN and WIZARD, a few of my miscellaneous Zelazny pieces.Not much more.Art is still a sore point.

The personal work
I enjoy the most is probably the music I’ve written, and some of the
songs.That is all deeply satisfying.It’s more fun to work on music than anything
else except actually performing in front of an audience — nothing beats the
rush when a live show is going right.

I am also having
a great time now with the business that I’ve been building since 2001. Within a year we’ll have published at least a
dozen books and a half-dozen audiobooks; released three or four CDs; put out
prints and posters from multiple artists; and moved a half dozen film stories
closer to actual production.But this is
all collaboration, and good collaboration is something I find utterly
exhilarating.Not to mention how much
pleasure I get from the fact that all this great creative work is happening, if
not through me, because of me.Peter S.
Beagle is one of my clients.He has now,
after 37 years, finally written a follow-up to THE LAST UNICORN.And not anything half-assed or formulaic,
either—something heartbreakingly beautiful.Getting to be the guy who made that happen, however inadvertently, is a
total gift from the universe.

RA: Do you still follow comics?Who do you read today?

CFC: In every
city I’m operating out of I have my favorite and second-favorite comic shops,
and on new comic Wednesday I’m guaranteed to be at one of them.These days, unlike my childhood, it is the
writers who are driving my purchasing decisions: Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Neil
Gaiman, Brian K. Vaughan, Barbara Kesel, Geoff Johns, J. Michael Straczynski,
Joss Whedon, Dan Slott, Grant Morrison, Brian Michael Bendis, Kurt Busiek,
Scott McCloud (when he joins us), Paul Chadwick, whole bunches more.And that’s just the ‘straight comics’
writers.Add in the graphic novel and
alternative crowd, and wow — we’ve never had this much literary talent in the
field at one time, not ever, and I think it bodes well for the future of the
medium.

Though we
obviously still need more women writers and artists.That’s a serious weakness and I’d like to see
it change.

RA: Which writers do you read outside the comic field?

CFC: Same as
childhood: everything, though there’s now a project-related filter that keeps
me from reading as much random stuff as I’d like.Up ahead on the to-do list is a screenplay
set in pre-WWII Thailand,
and I’ve got a whole bunch of reference books to devour for that one.Later this year we’ll be publishing a book
called THE MICHELANGELO INTERVIEWS, and there’s a mountain of Renaissance
art texts to plow through so I can properly edit and design it.Last year I was looking at Greg Benford
stories for possible movie development, and over the course of a month, I
bought and read everything he’s written.That sort of thing.

David Roudebush
says the world can be parsed into two categories: things I am insatiably
curious about, and things I am not insatiably curious about…yet.He’s got me nailed.

RA: What are you involved in nowadays?

CFC: The majority
of my waking time — and since I only sleep about five hours a night, that’s a
lot — is devoted to building the company.The structure is simple.There is
a central holding corporation called CCI, for Connor Cochran, Inc.I am chairman, president, secretary and
treasurer.CCI operates sub-divisions
which deal in specific tasks and/or media: Conlan Press is the book and
audiobook publishing division, ACE-Kobata Music handles live performances and
recordings, Changeling Films is the cinema division, SilverCity
Graphics & Fine Arts does prints and posters and anything purely
visual.Church of Superdog is the artist
management group, etc.There are at
least 20 such divisions already launched or on the planning board.Each has someone {or several someones} who is
actually in charge of the local turf, while I kibitz at will and keep the whole
multi-division machine spinning together productively.For example, I am publisher of Conlan Press,
but my editor, John Douglas, and my co-publisher, David Roudebush, will be
doing the lion’s share of the actual work once the division is completely off
the ground.

Conlan is the
first division to go public, via the www.conlanpress.com
website.Our initial release is an
unabridged audiobook of Peter S. Beagle’s THE LAST UNICORN, which we are
promoting by also putting out a limited edition hardcover of “Two Hearts”, that
coda/sequel story to THE LAST UNICORN that I mentioned earlier.To get the new story, you have to buy the
audiobook: simple.And there will only
be 3000 copies of the collector’s hardcover to go around.Response has been great so far.

Beyond that we
have too many projects and releases to cover in detail, in too many different
realms.I’ll say only that I am
intensely excited by the work that is coming along, and truly honored to get to
collaborate with and support such talented writers, producers, artists,
composers and designers.CCI may never
wind up going toe-to-toe with Disney or Sony or Universal someday, but we’ll
make a good run at it, and have a lot of fun in the attempt.The art of business, the business of art, and
a chance to change the world, even if only a little bit.Who could say no?

RA: Thank you, Mr. Cochran!

A 2007 Interview with Reality publisher Robert Gerson!

RA: Can you tell us a little about your background?

RG: Born and grew up in New York
City as Robert Gerstenhaber.When I was 21 I shortened my last name to Gerson,
largely because my last name was rarely spelled or pronounced correctly.I’m an artist, book cover illustrator and
graphic designer.Some of my paintings
and illustrations can be found at www.robertgerson.com.
Primarily self-taught with studies at The School Of Visual Arts in Manhattan
and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia where I studied
figurative and portrait painting.Moved
to Santa Barbara when I was 21 and have also lived in Colorado and the
Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania;I
currently live in the Santa Ynez Valley just north of Santa Barbara with my
wife Annette.

RA: How did you get involved in publishing Reality?

RG: Reality was the result of two of my passions as a teenager: becoming
an artist and collecting comic book and illustration art.The comic art community of the 1960s-70s,
which started with and evolved from the efforts of Jerry Bails, Roy Thomas and
Maggie & Don Thompson along with many others, was an amazing creative
environment for a young artist to learn from.I discovered the first independent magazines that were being published
around the country thanks to Phil Seuling’s NYC comic art shows and G. B.
Love’s RBCC.After a few years of
reading and being inspired by Graphic Story Magazine, Alter Ego, Fantastic
Fanzine, witzend and Squa Tront, I decided to give the publishing world a try
at the ripe old age of 14.For a young
artist those magazines offered a glimpse of the creative potential in comics, graphic
design, and sequential art illustration.

There was also a friendly “New
York neighborhood” aspect of getting Reality up and
running, thanks to my across the street rivalry with my school pal Adam
Malin.We were in school together since
kindergarten, read the same comics, copied and did our first drawings from the
same Kirby and Steranko pages together.Adam was planning to publish Infinity magazine and we had a fun rivalry
going back then about who could get the most interesting art and interviews for
their magazines.Adam is still a very
close friend today and we have a blast going back in the time machine to the
days when we published our magazines.

Reality, like most creative endeavors, was the result of a specific time
and place.There wre several independent
magazines published in the late 1960s that inspired me to create Reality.I recall studying several of the current
issues of those magazines as I thought about what reality’s contents would be.I was very impressed with Alter Ego #10 where
Roy Thomas had a perfect balance between informative articles and interviews
with rare behind-the-scenes art along with just the right amount of humor.Then there was Jerry Weist’s great EC-devoted
magazine Squa Tront, particularly #3 and 4 where Jerry was creating probably
the most exciting graphic design work of all the independent magazines
published during that era.His magazines
were more creatively designed than most of what was appearing on the newsstands
at the time.There there was Wally
Wood’s witzend.Wood, and later Bill
Pearson, really created one of the great illustrator and comic artist
magazines.What I really liked about
witzend was the blending in each issue of works by artists who started out in
the 1940s and 1950s such as Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood and
Harvey Kurtzman with then next generation from the 1960s, including artists
like Art Spiegelman and Vaughn Bode.witzend really did set the table for the next wave of creativity in
comics and graphic stories.

RA: Where did your contacts with the artists and
writers come from?There were some
pretty heavy hitters in the two issues of Reality that you published.

RG: The first time I met some of the artists who were published in
Reality was at Phil Seuling’s July comic art show.This was at the 1969 and 1970 shows at the
Statler Hilton Hotel in Manhattan.Looking back I don’t know how at 14 years old
I got the nerve to approach Jeffrey Jones, Bernie Wrightson or Michael
Kaluta.I was a rather shy, introverted
teenager. On the one hand they were all
just starting out in their careers and were only about 10 years older then me
so it was easier to talk to them than walking up to Al Williamson or Frank
Frazetta, both of whom I recall being very accessible and friendly.My initial contact was with Kaluta who, along
with Bernie Wrightson, was walking around the summer 1970 show.I had two of the very first original art
purchases that I’d bought at the show: a Graham Ingels’ Classics Illustrated
page and an Alex Raymond drawn Rip Kirby daily.Both Kaluta and Wrightson went wild over the originals.Raymond and Ingels were some of their main
artistic influences.I ended up selling
(or possibly trading for one of his drawings) the Ingels original to Wrightson
with the agreement that I could print it in the magazine I was planning to
publish.That quickly got the
conversation going about both of them contributing to the magazine which, in
turn, led to an introduction to Jeffrey Jones.So maybe I have Graham Ingels to thank for getting the whole thing
going.

Another artist that I admired who first published in the late 1960s is
Kenneth Smith.He was creating all of
those exquisitely detailed illustrations and title logos for Squa Tront,
witzend and other magazines before he moved on to do cover work for Warren’s
Creepy and Eerie magazines along with paperback covers.I don’t recall how we initially met.I think I may have asked him to design the
logo for Reality through the mail or by phone.After Reality #1 was published I would share convention tables with
Kenneth as he was beginning independent publishing with his own magazine
Phantasmagoria.He also published
several limited edition print series around that time.He would display several of his oil painting
that he’d done for the Warren
covers as well as his latest paperback assignments at our table.I remember Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel and
other artists stopping by to chat with him.As a young, aspiring artist I just soaked it all up.It was very inspiring meeting all of these
artists whose work I’d been collecting for years.I would go back to my family’s apartment
after the shows and sit at the drafting table that my Dad had built for me and
create my first drawings inspired by all of those experiences.

RA: Why did the story ‘Death Is The Sailor’ (written
by Len Wein & illustrated by Michael Kaluta) get split in two for
publication?It clearly was not intended
to be published that way.

RG: Yikes!I still cringe when I
open issue one and see that story only partially printed.What can I say except that I was 14 years old.Clearly my editorial judgment and experience
was minimal.I recall having too much
art for the first issue, primarily because I had promised several free ad pages
to other people who were publishing their own magazines at the time.So the rather silly decision to break that
story into two parts was the result.Probably it would have been better to pull some of the full page
drawings instead.

RA: A number of the stories were originally intended
for the professional B&W magazine Web Of Horror.Were any of the stories done specifically for
Reality?

RG: The stories that were specifically commissioned for Reality were the
Kaluta 2 page piece ‘As Night Falls’, the Frank Brunner story ‘Endless Chain’
and the Howard Chaykin/Bill Stillwell story ‘Renegade’.The Chaykin work was his very first published
comic story.Chaykin was a QueensCollege
classmate of my sister’s boyfriend and one day they both appeared at our
apartment while I was putting the first issue together.Howard was very persuasive in getting me to
publish his work.Of course, Howard went
on to create some very innovative work in comics, creating covers and pages
that were more in touch with various illustration styles than most traditional
comic art had been up to that point.Like acquiring so many of the Web Of Horror stories, being the first to
get Howard’s work into comics was another one of those odd little twists of
fate that happened around the summer of 1970, when I was first putting the
magazine together.

As for the Web Of Horror stories, I was certainly in the right place at
the right time for them.Web Of Horror had
just folded after only three issues.Most of the artists had just received their unpublished art back and
they were looking for somewhere to get the stories published.The most logical place would have been the Warren black & white
magazines, but I could just imagine that Jim Warren probably wanted nothing to
do with the art.I know Frank Brunner
has some interesting stories about saving the art done for the unpublished Web
Of Horror #4 and on, which he rescued from the publisher’s offices before they
shut down.(See the hardback version of
The Warren Companion from Twomorrows Publishing for Frank’s version of that
story.) All those beautifully drawn stories, orphaned from Web Of Horror,
launched Reality on an artistic level that was well beyond my wildest dreams
when I decided to create the magazine.I
felt very fortunate indeed.

RA: Was your magazine a true fanzine or was it a
prozine?The difference being that a
prozine paid artists and writers some amount for publication.

RG: My idea from the beginning was to create Reality as a small, limited
edition magazine.I never really felt
qualified to do a fanzine since I wasn’t part of the fan collector’s network,
nor did I belong to any of the collector’s clubs that were around back
then.I did pay reproduction rights to
print those stories and for some of the full page artwork that was specifically
commissioned for Reality, such as Kenneth Smith’s work.In those days one was quickly labeled a
prozine if they had the nerve to actually pay for contributions.I paid $25 per page for the first printing
rights to all those stories.At the time
that was a high rate considering artists were getting $35-$45 per page from the
mainstream publishers of that period.Honestly I couldn’t imagine printing those stories for free.Why wouldn’t I pay an artist for their work?There was always a moral cry from the traditional
fanzine publishers back then about paying for contributions.My intention was always to emulate a Warren magazine or
witzend when creating Reality.Crazy
ambitions for a 14 year old in hindsight!

RA: Do you still keep involved in comics in any way?

RG: Well I read Mutts everyday, probably the best and sweetest cat and
dog comic strip ever created.I don’t
really follow mainstream comics much except for a periodic visit to a comic
story.I tend to read anthologies and
collections and some of the graphic novels.As an artist and designer I really do like the high level of artistic
technique, style, and design in comics today and I’m glad to see that the
subject matter has grown beyond primarily superhero stories.

RA: Have you ever considered reprinting the two
issues as a standalone trade paperback?Perhaps with #1-3 of the Web Of Horror magazine included?Many of the stories have never been
reprinted.

RG: Every five years of so I think about doing a reprint issue with new
material but it never goes beyond the idea stage.Rounding up all the copyright holders would
be quite a project and I only have about six pages of the original art from the
magazine.I didn’t hold on to the
printing plates, which of course today would be useless anyway since all print
work is now based on digital pre-press files.Seeing a reprint of those first three issues of WOH would be nice but
rounding up complete story art would probably be quite a challenge.

RA: What comic writers and artists inspired you in
the Reality days?Do you follow any
writers or artists today?

RG: Back in the 1970s the artists I studied and learned from included
Frank Frazetta, Jim Steranko, Reed Crandall, Roy Krenkel, Kenneth Smith,
Jeffrey Jones, Michael Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Victor Moscoso and Rick
Griffin.Their work is woven into my
paintings even today and probably always will be.A few of the comic artists and illustrators I
enjoy who are working today are James Jean, Patrick McDonnell, John Paul Leon
and Phil Hale.

As for writers, I recall enjoying Archie Goodwin, Jim Steranko, Roy
Thomas, Ray Bradbury and Will Eisner.I
loved Eisner’s creative innovations in graphic stories from the 1970s and on.His commitment to the development of comics
into graphic stories is very inspiring.I never did get to meet him when I studied at Visual Arts.Today anyone in comics who is doing writing
about contemporary life or a creative look at social issues are the writers I
gravitate to.Writers like Art
Spiegelman, Craig Thompson and Daniel Clowes.There is such a lot of interesting new art and stories being published
now that I know I’m leaving out many exciting writers and artists.It really is a great time for graphic stories
and comics.

RA: Any interesting anecdotes or stories that you’d
care to share?

RG: The Bernie Wrightson illustration in Reality #2 is the prototype version
of the Swamp Thing character and was the first illustration of the muck monster
to appear before Swamp Thing’s official debut in the July 1971 House Of Secrets
#92.At the time I didn’t even know I
was publishing a Swamp Thing illustration.I was at Michael Kaluta’s apartment to pick up some of his artwork for
the 2nd issue and I mentioned that I really was hoping to have a
piece by Bernie for the new issue, particularly since he hadn’t appeared in the
1st issue.So I’m asking
Kaluta about how to get in touch with Wrightson and at that moment Bernie walks
in the door.Kaluta asks him if the
drawing of Bernie’s that he has sitting next to his drafting table can be
published in Reality.Mike grabs this
beautiful drawing and shows it to me.Bernie says “Sure, go ahead and print it”.It certainly was cool to publish an early
Wrightson drawing.

The color covers to Reality #2 were printed as continuous tone
lithography.Back then, that printing
method was quite rare and mainly used for fine art prints and not for mass
reproduction.There were no 4 color screen
dots on those covers and that allowed for a more accurate reproduction of each
artist’s painting.Collectors have asked
me over the years about the print runs for Reality.Issue #1 had a print run of 1,000 copies and
issue #2 was 2,000 copies.On both
issues I only sold a few hundred copies directly to subscribers.The rest were sold wholesale to magazine
dealers.

It was a real thrill to meet all of those artists and writers at such a
young age.It shaped my life in becoming
an artist and still inspires me today.Thanks for asking me about Reality.It really is fun to get back to those times now and then.

RA: Thanks, Robert, it’s much appreciated!

A
2007 Interview with Adam Malin!

RA: We’re welcoming Adam Malin, publisher of the
1970 fanzine Infinity.Adam, can you
give us a little information on your background?

AM: I was born and grew up in Queens,
New York.My dad was a commercial artist who
specialized in magazine and catalog layout and my mom was one of the first
women in advertising, following which she segued into a career as a high school
English teacher.My mom encouraged me to
read comics (very unusual for the era) and my dad taught me a lot about
magazine design/layout, so starting a fanzine wasn’t that much of a stretch for
me.My lifelong buddy, Gary Berman, grew
up a few doors down from me.He was also
into comic books and we used to trade books between each other.The first of several life-defining moments came
for me in the summer of 1969 when I attended Phil Seuling’s comic book
convention at the Statler Hilton Hotel.I was introduced to comic fandom there, a validation and vindication
that I would parlay into several businesses over the next four decades.I discovered that fans were creating
magazines featuring art and interviews with their favorite comic book creators,
and of course, saw the huge potential in the convention/live event medium that
would become my future livelihood.

RA: When did you actually become interested in
comics?

AM: I was a Marvel fiend, and Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko were
my early gods.Fantastic Four was my
heaven, and I still maintain to this day (and I’m 51 now) that I am the World’s
Number One Fantastic Four fan, just as Stan Lee proclaimed (no doubt based on
information he created himself) that the FF was the World’s Favorite Comic
Magazine.To see the movie ads for the
Silver Surfer—“Rise”—as the star of the second FF movie is pretty much coming
full circle for me.I can’t wait to see
it, and I know my pal, Doug Jones, who is playing the Surfer, will bring the
same amazing talent to this character that he did in several of Guillermo Del
Toro’s films as well.The only question
is, how will they handle Galactus??

Jim Steranko was the other Marvel talent who really blew my mind, and I’m
proud to say that he was the first guest at the very first Creation Comic Art
Convention that Gary and I produced in 1971.Steranko’s work on Nick Fury remains a high watermark of 1960s comic
books.During this period I also
stumbled across EC Comics, and they had a profound impact on me as well—I fell
in love with Graham Ingels, Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, and all the others
in their stable.To this day I hate Dr.
Frederic Wertham for almost single handedly bringing the demise of those
beloved books.

I also made the acquaintance of Doug Murray, a super fan about 10 years
my superior, who took an early interest in me while I was still practically in
diapers (and no, he’s not a pedophile).Doug was a mentor of mine who turned me on to the worlds of fantasy/sci
fi art beyond the limited scope of books I had personally experienced.He went on to publish an excellent fanzine of
his own called Heritage, in addition to writing many comics, including The ‘Nam
for Marvel.

RA: What inspired you to begin the Infinity fanzine?

AM: A genuine love of comic art and the graphic story medium.I had begun collecting comic art (as did Gary) and we also drew
art—really, they were swipes—of all our favorite comic characters.We published a Xerox fanzine called Electra
Fanzine, of which the less said the better.Suffice it to say that we used our own artwork which was silly, but it
got us into the publishing business.Once we got past the stupidity of using our own art, and we began to
accumulate some great pieces by some of our favorite artists, we knew we were
almost ready to start a real publishing venture.However, we knew we had to score some
interviews with our favorite artists, and Doug Murray was instrumental in
assisting in that regard.

RA: Did you consider it a fanzine or a prozine?

AM: I’d say we were a fanzine in terms of our editorial content (almost
non-existent and certainly juvenile, at least at the beginning), but we were a
prozine in terms of art quality.Doug
contributed some interviews that were of professional quality, and he remains a
fine journalist and comic book writer today.

RA: Robert Gerson mentioned the friendly rivalry
between you and he regarding getting the best artists and writers for your
respective books.Could you tell that
story from your side of the fence?Are
you the same age?One of the reasons I
ask that is that your responses in the letter’s pages seemed a good deal more
mature than the average 14-15 year old.

AM: Robert grew up down the block from Gary and myself.He and I were in class together until I
moved out further on Long Island during high
school.We have been lifelong friends,
and I love him dearly.Robert has that
rare combination of artistic chops and great design sense.Even in those days he had genuine editorial
direction, which I feel I lacked in some degree.It may have been a friendly rivalry in those
days but as I look back now I realize how much admiration I had for his
magazine Reality, and how much gratitude I have for all the good times we’ve
shared.We’re both the same age and we
both now live in southern California,
so we see each other quite frequently.It’s so much fun to reminisce about the glory days.

RA: Robert’s Reality was a magazine that ran actual
comics while Infinity was largely a comics related magazine, although you did
run some comic strips—quite good ones actually.What prompted the format decision?

AM: Infinity’s focus was on interviews and features on art talent, and
less on actual graphic stories.Issue #4
had a gorgeous full color cover painting by Richard Corben (and to this day I
hit myself over the head for selling that piece) and some cool Larry Todd work,
very subversive.Basically, we had the
money to afford some very great art, and we published it in a high quality
manner, including full color process covers in most cases.I also had all the type set in typeset
(during the era before desktop publishing and computer text existed) for the
later issues, which certainly increased the production values.We were pretty good on layout too, a carry over
from my Dad’s tutelage in magazine design.

RA: How did you locate and get artists to
contribute?You had some very impressive
ones doing covers, strips or pin-ups, including Frank Brunner, Bruce Jones,
Jeff Jones, Roy G. Krenkel, Kenneth Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta and
more.

AM: Many of these artists attended our early comic conventions, and we
got to know them through the events and/or by seeking them out.In particular, the “Studio” artists, which
were Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith and Kaluta—were favorites of ours.There are some funny stories concerning those
guys.

Jeff Jones: a brilliant painter who unfortunately has been facing some
challenges these past few years.I will
always love his work.In those days he
was married to Louise Jones, who went on to marry Walt Simonson.Jeff struggled with gender
orientation/identification even in those days (and sadly it was a much less
forgiving era socially) and in that sense he found a kindred spirit in dear
Vaughn Bode (himself the brilliant artist of Cobalt 60 and Cheech Wizard, who
allegedly died of autoerotic asphyxiation in 1975). Jeff had his gorgeous paintings all over his
apartment in New York’s Village, and I had the honor of visiting there on
several occasions.Did I mention that I
owned several Jones paintings, including the nude girl that was the cover of
Reality #1?Like a schmuck, I sold all
my Jones paintings over the years, much to my eternal regret.

Barry Windsor-Smith: Sensational talent who was fluent in a variety of
media, and lived up in Woodstock, NY.I
don’t think we ever had any of his work in Infinity, but he was a good friend
and displayed at several of our early events.

Michael Kaluta: Again a brilliant artist and graphic storyteller, who was
featured in both Infinity and Reality with strips and paintings.Doug did a great interview with him which was
featured in an issue of Infinity.

Bernie Wrightson: Possibly the most brilliant of the lot, Bernie invited
me up to his house in the Village on several occasions, where we interviewed him
and watched his amazing creative process.He, of course, went on to Swamp Thing and then to his amazing work
illustrating Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein.I’ve got a Swamp Thing painting by Bernie
hanging in my office that I’m very proud of.One time I got my hands on a beautiful strip by him called ‘Peter,
Peter, Pumpkin Eater’ (originally published in the one-shot prozine, Abyss)
which was done in sepia gauche.Each
panel was magnificent, so what did I do?I cut the page into individual panels and published each separately,
forever dismembering the page—typical of my “editorial style’, both immature
and disrespectful.I guess in a certain
sense it’s the ultimate compliment, as each panel was to me a painting
deserving of its own placement in our fanzine.Bernie attends my shows even today, particularly the Fangoria Horror
Shows I coproduced in Los Angeles
every year.

Frank Brunner: Was/Is an amazing talent, and for some inexplicable reason
I ended up with a pile of his full-sized painting, some of which I
published.They were gorgeous.We had them underneath a dealer’s table we
had at some show back in the early 1970s, and Frank came by and asked to get
some of the paintings back (they were on loan or somesuch).I pulled up a painting with a big fucking
hole in it!Somehow we had damaged the
piece.Frank nearly did a shit fit, but
somehow he forgave us.Again, typical
juvenile hi-jinks from us as teenagers.At least we knew great art when we saw it!

Bruce Jones: a fine writer and artist who contributed both individual art
and stripwork to us.We started to run
his written/illustrated strip ‘The Mating’ but it was never completed.Bruce has gone on to have a fine career in
the graphic story field.

Roy Krenkel: A dear man, one of the greats of the EC era.We published several pieces by Roy before his untimely
passing.

Jack Kirby: Incredibly, the King was the brother of one of the teachers
at the high school my mom taught at, and so I finally got to meet my idol.We published at least one or two pieces by
him.After Jack moved to California, he continued
to attend some Creation Comic events.Jack never lived to see how his wonderful creations made it to the
movies, nor did he properly get compensated for his incredible
achievements.

Vaughn Bode: One of the most subversive and original talents in comics in
the 1960s and early 1970s.my best
memory of him, other than his amazing slideshow extravaganzas that he present
at our shows, was a poignant scene that took place in the hallway at one of our
shows.The great Wally Wood, arguably
EC’s most prolific and finest strip artist, was a chronic alcoholic who was
reduced to almost homeless status by the early 1970s.At one of our early Thanksgiving shows I
found Wally crumpled on the floor in a hallway with Vaughn sitting cross-legged
next to him.Wally was sobbing about how
his life was over, that no one gave a shit about him.Vaughn was lovingly hugging Wally, reassuring
him that he was still the greatest artist of his era.Wally never came out of his funk, but Vaughn
deeply impressed me with the depth of his humanity, and I was very depressed
upon hearing the news of his passing those many years ago.

Larry Todd: One of the Haight Ashbury pack, who worked with Gilbert
Shelton on the Classic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers underground comix as well
as his own marijuana-tinged parable, Dr. Atomic.Larry was a lovable rascal who gave us many
fun pieces of art as well as some beautiful paintings.Robert’s Todd painting for the cover of Reality
#2 is still a classic—particularly as enhanced by Robert’s use of the
giclee-like reproduction which eliminated screen dots.

RA: Why was there a supplement pamphlet issued with
Infinity #3A & #3B?For that matter,
why did you do a 3A & 3B set of issues and not simply a #3 and a #4?

AM: The two issue set of Infinity #3 was a progressive way of housing all
that beautiful content.We felt we had
two volumes worth of cover material, although, sadly, we didn’t have the money
to print Jeff Jones’ aborigine painting in color.It was gorgeous, in burnt umber and sienna
tones.We also had two issues worth of
interior content, so it just seemed to make sense then, and still does.By the way, does anyone really have copies of
these fanzines other than you and me, Richard?I thought the Infinity series was completely lost to posterity.

RA: Well, I don’t have a complete set.I’ve only the double #3 set and #5, which
features a pretty cool Larry Todd cover.I keep my eye our for 1970s era fanzines all the time though.Every once in a while, something turns
up.

Why did Infinity end?

AM: Gary and I realized producing live events was where we wanted to be,
not publishing, and 36 years later it’s obvious that we made the right
decision.

Until Gary and I graduated college, essentially we did one show a
year—the Thanksgiving convention in Manhattan, which took place at any number
of grade B New York venues, including the Statler Hilton, Commodore, Diplomat,
McAlpin, Roosevelt, New Yorker, Americana and more.I am an expert on funky, aged New York venues of the
20th century.Perhaps in some
future narrative I will recount a history of those misbegotten, aged facilities
and their place in the history of early fan conventions.

Just as a matter of history, we spent our first 15 or so years running
comic book conventions, which slowly mutated into Sci Fi/Fantasy films and TV
events (beginning with Telefantasy in 1976, which was coproduced by Doug
Murray, Allan Asherman and ourselves.Then we went on to individually-themed events for Star Trek, Etc.

At this point in my life, Creation Events has defined 2/3s of my
life.Doug Murray still manages some of
our events to this day, and occasionally some of our good friends from the
comics era come by to participate.We
book Stan Lee occasionally, and he’s as wonderful and hyperbolic as ever.

RA: Do you have any anecdotes you’d care to share?

I have a good Stan Lee story.Back
in the early 1970s, we would pay Stan a speaker’s fee of $1000, which was a lot
by the standards of those days but only a tiny fraction of the fees he now
commands for a public appearance.After
Stan’s appearance was over, I was to bring Stan’s fee—in cash—to him in his
green Volkswagon station wagon parked on the street outside the hotel.I did this several times over several
years.It was funny and idiosyncratic.

Jim Steranko was known for his maverick ways, and one year he proposed a
radical entrance for an appearance he was to make at the Statler Hilton.Those that attended events at that property
(which went on to become the Pennsylvania Hotel and is currently being reborn
as a condo) should remember that the fabled 18th floor, the top
floor of the hotel, had the Sky Top and Penn Top meeting rooms.Steranko’s scheme was to fly into the event
from a helicopter, which would hover just above the hotel.In those days helicopters had not yet been
banned from downtown and the disaster over the Pan Am building had not yet
occurred.Anyways, Jim fancied himself
another Harry Houdini and, in fact, he was an amazing illusionist and escape
artist.So his plan was to hang upside
down, bound in a strait jacket and dangling from the helicopter.He would extricate himself from the jacket
and drop down onto the balcony of the hotel which ran the length of the
building outside the ballroom.We were
all set to play out this ridiculous and dangerous scenario when the hotel
caught wind of the plan and promptly shot the idea down.

RA: Do you keep up with the comics field today?

AM: Of course!I just attended
Wizard World in LA and I try to stay on top of the latest talent in the
field.Continuity in the series
themselves, on the other hand—forget it.Fantastic Four is up in the 500s now and I could never keep track.It’s an exciting time in graphic stories,
what with the convergence of comic work and filmmaking.

RA: Any of the current crop of writers and artists
that you particularly admire?

AM: The expected suspects, like Jim Lee, Tad Williams, Michel Turner,
Adam Kubert, Brian Bendis…there are so many talented people today.And, of course, it’s amazing for me to see
guys like Frank Miller and Steve Ditko up on the screen.Between 300, SinCity,
Spiderman, etc, it’s the second renaissance for the graphic story.

RA: Anything you’d like to say in conclusion?

AM: Infinity was and is only a small part of the fanzine puzzle of the
1970s.There were magazines with much
stronger editorial values, including Squa Tront, witzend and Reality, but I
think we had a youthful exuberance and some nice art combined with good
production values that set us apart from a lot of the publications of the
era.In a sense, Infinity was the
springboard from which I transitioned from publishing into producing live
events, and for that I’m grateful, both for the exposure and the insight that
it gave me.If anyone is interested and
doesn’t already know about my current business and roster of events, go to www.creationent.com to check us out.

My folks were anxious to give me the best education
they could.They read to me from the
time I was old enough to understand.Through the use of Golden Books and, later, Superman and Batman comic
books, they taught me to read before I turned five years old.

Television wasn’t a really big thing then—we got a set
when I was about five—one with an enormous five-inch screen.I loved Howdy Doody but when Rocky Jones,
Space Ranger came on the air, then Superman, I was hooked!I had an uncle who was a real science fiction
fan and he introduced me to written SF and SF movies—I saw War Of The Worlds
when I was five, brought the paperback book (which I still have) on my way
home, and have read SF and Fantasy ever since.

I kept my interest in comics and SF right through
Elementary School and, after a move to Long Island,
Junior High as well.In 1958, I
discovered Famous Monster of Filmland and started a correspondence with Forry
Ackerman that led to some writing in the magazine—my first ‘professional’
work—which I wasn’t paid for.Still, it
was a start and I began doing movie articles and reviews in a lot of
magazines.I kept it up right through
college (I went to Columbia
and majored in History and Education).

I went to the World Science Fiction Convention in
1964—the same year Forry Ackerman visited my house.I loved the Con and purchased my first piece
of artwork there—a cover rough by Jack Gaughnn.

A couple of years later, I hurt a leg playing
basketball and got drafted!Spent almost
five years in the military doing this and that.During that time I got in touch with several artists, including Kelly
Freas, Roy Krenkel, and Al Williamson.I
already knew Frank Frazetta—although not as an artist—I had played baseball
with him before my Army days!I only
found out that he was the same guy who did those great Conan paintings when I
was assigned to interview him by Take ONe magazine in 1968 or so.

It was around this time that I became aware of fandom
and fanzines.

RA: What got you interested
in comics?What was the first you
remember buying?

DM: Comics were one of the way I learned to read.I started reading around the end of the
Golden Age and I always bought Superman and Batman books.

RA: Did you have any favorite
writers or artists?

DM: I couldn’t have told you then who drew or wrote
anything in the comics—nobody was credited and there was no way in the 1950s to
find out that information.I just bought
the book for the character.

RA: Were you involved in the
fan movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s?

DM: I was sort of tangentially involved in the fan
movement.Mostly through contact with Al
Williamson and Roy Krenkel—I was never a joiner so I was never a part of
anything organized in any way.

RA: You did some work with
both Infinity and Reality, which were early fanzines.How did you get involved with them?

DM: I can’t really remember how I met Adam Malin and
Gary Berman, the publishers/editors of Infinity.I think they contacted me at some point
because someone they were talking to gave them my name.I had really gotten involved in collecting
artwork by this time—had a lot of Virgil Finlay stuff along with many SF
paintings.Adam and Gary needed interior
illustrations and, for me, that was a great situation—I provided stuff from my
collection (for a few dollars) and used what they paide me to buy more
art.As time passed, I got pretty
friendly with Adam and Gary (a friendship that continues to this day), who were
fairly young at the time.I’m not sure
what their folks thought of the situation—I was older than them, but it was a
different time and the kind of thing that happens so often now was much less
frequently heard of then.Today’s a
different story.I know Adam and Gary
introduced me to Reality’s publisher & editor Bob Gerstenhaber (as he was
then known), and I helped him a bit as well—but his concept of a fanzine was
different than what Adam and Gary were doing so I had less to do with him.

RA: What brought about your
own fanzine, Heritage, and why did you pick Flash Gordon as the focal point?

DM: Heritage actually came about for two main
reasons.First, I had become friendly
with Richard Garrison, a recent addition to my neighborhood on Long Island.He
was into many of the same things I was and was really interested in doing a
fanzine.

I, on the other hand, was still in the Army and still
collecting artwork.A fanzine seemed a
good way to get artwork from some of the artists I was interested in and have a
way to recoup what the art cost.Also,
it was a chance to do something that hadn’t been done in a big way up to that
time.I liked the fanzine ‘I’ll Be
Damned’, which had featured some comic stories, but I thought it would be more
effective to do something with a single subject.

Al Williamson had become one of my most valued friends
at this point, and Flash Gordon was my favorite movie serial (as well as
his).Doing an entire book on the
character just seemed like a good idea.

DM: As I said above, Rich Garrison was a fan who moved
into my home town around the time that the Heritage idea took shape.It was fortunate that he did, because I got
sent overseas just before it was to come out—Rich took control and was
instrumental in getting the final pieces put together.

Bruce Hershenson was a friend of Ron Barlow, who was
another friend who was at that time involved with some Bernie Wrightson
projects.He’s since moved to Las Vegas and has a huge
collection of movie posters, a subject that he’s done several books on.

RA: With the exception of
Neal Adams, most of the artists in Heritage submitted stories of four pages or
less.Was that a requirement?

DM: I was paying what was at the time a very high
per-page rate.My budget demanded that I
keep the stories to four pages.

RA: How did you get in touch
with the writers & artists?

DM: I knew many of them before I did Heritage.The ones I knew were often able to put me on
to the others.

RA: Do you have any anecdotes
about the publication of Heritage that you’d care to share?

DM: Neal Adams’ story was the last one delivered.He was always slow and I ended up sitting
next to his desk for about a week to make sure he got the job done.That turned out to be a good thing as I ended
up being friendly with everyone at the Adams/Giordano studio and did some work
there later on.

RA: When and how did you
become a professional comic writer?

DM: I became a comic writer quite by chance.I knew a lot of contemporaries, of course—I
played poker with Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and some others.When I got out of the Army, I spent a lot of
time at Adams’ studio and did a bit of pick-up
work there.Larry Hama was one of the
artists working there.He and I became
friends and later on, about 1984, when he was an editor at Marvel he decided to
do some Viet Nam
stories in a relaunch of the Savage Tales title.He knew I was capable of the work and that
I’d had the wartime experiences to fuel the stories.Savage Tales attracted a lot of attention,
leading directly to the four-color comic ‘The ‘Nam’ which made me a comic
writer.I’ve done a lot of stuff
since.Oddly, as I write this, I just
contracted to do some stories for a new incarnation of Savage Tales.The wheel just keeps on turning.

RA: Of your own work, what
would you consider to be your favorite?

DM: I think the first 12 issues of ‘The ‘Nam’ are hard
to beat.Mike Golden’s artwork was just
fantastic and I wasn’t struggling with any kind of editorial nonsense.It was a really good time to work at Marvel
and I’m very proud of those books.

RA: Whose work in the comic
field do you enjoy following today?

DM: I don’t buy a lot of comics these days.I got kind of spoiled when I was working for
Marvel and got everything for free.I do
follow Frank Cho’s ‘Liberty Meadoes’, ‘Astro City’ (when that one comes out)
and pretty much anything by George Perez, Adam Hughes and Jim Steranko—and
anthing that just looks cool or sounds intriguing.

RA: What projects are you
working on today?

DM: I’m currently doing a new series called ‘Jungle
Girl’ for Dynamite Entertainment with Frank Cho!Frank is my partner on the series and will be
doing covers and layouts.The interior
pencils will be by Adriano, one of DE’s overseas guys who does some really nice
work.Issue #0 (my first #0) comes out
at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con and I’m looking forward to the
reaction.I’m also doing an as
yet-unamed series for the new Savage Tales.

RA: Any final thoughts?

DM: It’s been an interesting time.I think I’ve been blessed—I love the fantasy
world and have spent much of my life living and working in it.I have a great wife, good friends (including
Adam and Gary whom I’ve now known for what, 30 years?!) and still enjoy what I
do.What more can you ask for?

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